'Historic visionary' step towards ensuring social justice Chhattisgarh CM on caste survey move

Raipur, Apr 30 (PTI) Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai on Wednesday hailed the Centre's announcement to conduct a caste enumeration in the next census, terming the move as a "historic and visionary" decision towards ensuring social justice and inclusive development.

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, at its meeting in New Delhi, decided to include caste enumeration in the forthcoming census exercise in a "transparent" manner.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to officially include the count of castes in the census is commendable. It will provide a strong foundation to social policy making in the country and effective schemes can be implemented for the deprived sections, Sai said in a statement.

The decision is a "historic and visionary" step towards ensuring social justice and inclusive development, the BJP leader affirmed.

Slamming the Congress, the CM accused the opposition party of engaging in divisive politics in the name of caste.

"Since independence, the Congress had been ignoring caste census (when it was in power). In 2010, when the party-led UPA government was in office, the Congress even stopped the exercise despite most of the parties giving their consent to it. Now again the Congress is trying to divide society by making caste surveys a medium of politics."

Census is a central government subject and when the count of castes will be done through it, its reliability, transparency and utility in policy making will be much more effective, the CM noted.

Caste data collected by many states in the name of survey was driven by political agenda and it affected social fabric, he said.

Notably, the previous Congress government in Chhattisgarh had formed a Quantifiable Data Commission for the survey of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) population in the state.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)