Seeking to counter the political implications of women's reservation bill, the Congress is making an effort to turn the endeavour around into a caste issue and put the spotlight on its demand for a caste census and proportionate reservation.
The party, well aware that the BJP would want to project the passage of the women's reservation bill in Parliament as a personal achievement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has linked the development to its demand for caste census and enhancing the reservation for Other Backward Castes proportionate to their population.
This was evident as the Congress, in a departure from its stand when the Manmohan Singh government had brought the women's quota bill in Parliament in 2008 and the legislation was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010, has now demanded that there should be a quota-within-quota for OBCs in the reservation for women in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi, while welcoming the passage of the women's reservation bill, raised questions about the linking of the implementation of the quota with census exercise and the delimitation of constituencies, and most importantly, said it was a diversionary tactic aimed at taking everyone's attention away from the demand for caste census and providing reservation based on population data.
“The caste census should be done now and the last caste census data should be released at once... please tell us how many OBCs (there are). We have the data, I know, because the government of India has already done the census and the data is available. Why is the prime minister not releasing this data? And second, what is this delay in the census?” Gandhi said while addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters in Delhi.
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, as she led her party in the debate on the women's reservation bill in the Lok Sabha, had demanded that the government must ensure that the 33 per cent quota for women in the legislative bodies includes reservation for those belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes.
Taking off from the women's reservation bill, the Congress has heightened the pitch for a caste census, which at present appears to be the centrepiece of its offensive against the BJP and the Modi government in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
The argument being made by the Congress is that just as it did not include OBC quota in the reservation for women in the legislative bodies, the BJP is opposed to carrying out a caste census and providing reservation to the OBCs based on their actual population. The Congress and the other parties in the INDIA alliance feel that the issue of caste census could help them counter the BJP's Hindutva-based politics.
A senior Congress leader said the UPA government could not release the data of the socio-economic caste survey since there were some discrepancies in the data collected that had to be resolved and by the time the exercise was completed, the BJP was in power at the Centre. He said the Modi government could have made public the data.