CWC meeting today to discuss terror attack and caste census

“There is a meeting of the CWC at 4 pm on Friday. The most important issue is the Pahalgam attack and we will discuss that as it is the biggest political issue before the country. The country is waiting (for action) and those who have lost their family members are seeking justice,” Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said.

Ramesh said the Congress would also raise in Parliament the demand to remove the 50% quota cap. “We want to discuss the road ahead for the party after the government’s announcement. Caste census has been a long-standing demand of the Congress, which is why the government has made this announcement. But we want answers from the government regarding the timeline, budget, and the 50% cap on reservation,” said a highly placed source in the party.

Referring to the Cabinet nod for the collection of caste data, Ramesh asked, “Like what Rahul Gandhi said yesterday, ‘headline toh de diya, lekin deadline kaha hai (you gave us the headline but what about the deadline)?’”

Following the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi, who has been among the most vocal advocates of a caste census, said the exercise was “our vision” and that it was the “first step” towards a “new development paradigm”. He said the next steps should include lifting the 50% cap on reservation and implementing reservation in private educational institutions.

Gandhi told reporters at the All India Congress Committee’s Akbar Road office in Delhi, “We had said in Parliament that we will get the caste census done. And we also said the 50% cap on reservation, the artificial wall, will be broken. What happened that, suddenly, Narendra Modi ji, who used to say that there are just four castes, announced the caste census? We fully support this. But we want a timeline and when it will be done. This is the first step. Telangana has become a model for the caste census.”

Describing the Telangana census as “detailed and granular” and pointing out that it was undertaken through an “open process”, Gandhi said the national census should “follow some of the ideas” from the exercise in the Congress-ruled state. “We are more than happy to help,” said Gandhi.

Since the announcement, the talk in the party has been about how it needs to “own the narrative” on caste census and make sure “people know that it was because of pressure from the Congress that the government caved to this demand”. The apprehension in Congress ranks is that, in one stroke, Modi may have taken away one of its crucial poll planks.

The LoP also said that the Congress had shown“we can pressure the government to do the caste census” and “we will show that we can do the same for (Article) 15(5)”.

The demand for a caste census has also been the centrepiece of the Congress’s social justice agenda to reach out to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which have moved away from the party in the post-Mandal years and embraced the BJP under Modi.