PIONEER NEWS SERVICE | Dehradun
The Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that Congress is engaged in an unsuccessful race to take credit for the caste census. The party said Congress remained silent on the issue while in power and is now trying to gain political mileage from it.
The BJP’s State media in-charge Manveer Singh Chauhan said that Congress is behaving like an outsider trying to claim ownership of the decision. He said the announcement is a political setback for those who did not act on the issue during their long tenure in government. He said that Congress politicised the sensitive issue after independence but did not take concrete steps while in power. He claimed that former Prime Ministers from the Congress, including Jawaharlal Nehru, publicly criticised caste-based reservations.
Chauhan said that whenever a census was conducted under Congress governments, caste enumeration was not included. He said the Congress-led government in Karnataka conducted a caste survey but has kept the report undisclosed for the past three years. Chauhan said that following the central government’s recent announcement, Congress is loudly trying to claim credit but their past actions do not support their current stand.
