The Patna High Court has given a big blow to all three Nitish Kumar, Lalu Yadav and Rahul Gandhi by stopping the very ambitious caste based survey from the point of view of political mobilization and votes. When Nitish and Lalu started caste based survey in Bihar, Rahul Gandhi challenged to implement it at the national level.
In fact, these parties think that by conducting a caste-based census, they will be able to easily win the votes of the backward castes by luring them with an increase in the percentage of their reservation. Nitish’s Janata Dal (United) and Lalu’s Rashtriya Janata Dal are casteist parties, but the Congress, which for almost a decade had given the argument of not implementing the Mandal Commission report because it would increase caste animosity and it would be fatal for national unity. It will be proved that the leaders of the same Congress are not only advocating caste-based census, but are also demanding from the Central Government to exceed the limit of 50 percent export quota set by the Supreme Court.
In fact, the work of census is done under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948. The Bill to enact this Act was introduced by the then Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Census is a Union subject under Article 246 of the Indian Constitution. It is listed in serial number 69 of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. According to the constitutional provisions, the state government does not have the right to conduct census.
Patna High Court has also said that prima facie we are of the opinion that the State has no power to conduct caste based survey. The way it is being done is akin to a census, thus encroaching on the legislative power of the Union. The High Court also observed that the essential difference between census and survey is that census contemplates the collection of accurate facts and verifiable details. Whereas the purpose of survey is to collect and analyze the opinion and perceptions of the general public. The High Court has stayed the survey of the Bihar government considering it to be a census. So to say, the Nitish government was conducting a survey, but in reality it was a census only. Even when there was BJPJD (U) government in Bihar, Nitish and Tejashwi met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested caste census, but Vendra very clearly expressed his disagreement with the idea of ​​caste census. After this, the alliance changed in Bihar, the BJP came out and as soon as RJD and Congress got together, Nitish started the census work with fanfare.
However, Bihar is ahead of all the states for caste based politics. Nitish understands very well that he cannot make JD(U) a bigger party just by being the leader of WMA, so he will be able to form an alliance with any other party only if he gets the votes of some more backward castes. RJD is also in the same condition, it also wants the support of other backward castes more than Yadav votes.
But the surprising thing is that Congress had never done the politics of mobilization of backward castes, but both their allies explained to them that if the caste of Muslims is also included in forward-backward census at the time of census, then the way for Muslim reservation will be possible. Will open.
The bottom line is that by banning the caste-based census, the Patna High Court has given a major blow to the politics through which once again efforts were being made to set fire to Bihar in the name of social justice. (sp)
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