New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday that the party supports the government’s decision to conduct caste enumeration during the forthcoming population census, but it should specify a timeline.
Addressing a press conference here, Rahul Gandhi, who is the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, said Telangana has provided a model for conducting caste census and it can provide a blueprint for the exercise at the national level.
He said the Congress has been demanding a caste census and the government had “suddenly after 11 years” taken this decision.
“We had said in the Parliament that we will make Caste Census happen. We had also said that we would scrap the 50% cap, the artificial wall that is in place. Narendra Modi used to say that there are just four castes. Don’t know what happened but suddenly after 11 years, Caste Census has been announced,” Rahul Gandhi said.
“We completely support it but we want a timeline. We want to know that by when this will happen. This is the first step. Telangana has become a model in Caste Census and it can become a blueprint. We offer our support to the government in designing the Caste Census…There are two examples – Bihar’s and Telangana’s and there is a vast difference between the two,” he added.