Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal on Monday demanded that the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government conduct an independent caste-based census in the State along the lines of the government in Bihar.
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Remarking that such an exercise in other States had benefited citizens there, Mr. Bhujbal has written a letter to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, citing the example of Bihar, where a caste-based survey has commenced recently.
The Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) government in Bihar on Saturday launched the survey with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying the exercise would prove helpful for the upliftment of all sections of society.
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In his letter, Mr. Bhujbal, a prominent Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader in the State, said the demand for a caste-based census in Maharashtra has been pending for a long time.
Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, too, had conducted similar exercises which are benefiting residents of these States, he observed, in an apparent reference to welfare schemes based on the surveys.
“The first thing the British did when they conquered India was to start a caste-wise census every 10 years. They felt a census was necessary to study those who were to be ruled. This work was done regularly for 60 years from 1871 to 1931 and was disrupted in 1941 owing to the [Second] World War. After Independence, the Government of India adopted a policy of enumerating only Scheduled Castes and Tribes while lumping all others together. Due to this, OBCs have been deprived,” Mr. Bhujbal said.
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The NCP leader from Nashik further said that earlier, Members of Parliament— including Sameer Bhujbal and the late BJP leader Gopinath Munde along with 100 other MPs - had in 2010 moved a resolution in the Lok Sabha seeking a caste-based census at the national level.
Accordingly, a census was conducted on the economic and social status of rural and urban households between 2011 and 2014, but the Centre had not yet disclosed its findings, the NCP leader said in his letter.
“So, like the Bihar Government, Maharashtra should conduct an independent [caste-based] census…The census of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes has been happening for the last 150 years and these sections have separate budgetary allocations for welfare schemes. As per the recommendations made by the Mandal Commission in 1980, the third backward class came into existence, which included nomadic tribes and Banjaras among others. However, despite allotting constitutional safeguards, they prove ineffective owing to a lack of knowledge about their population. This is because there is no regular census,” Mr. Bhujbal said, stressing the need for having accurate data on these castes.
In December 2021, after the Supreme Court had dismissed the Maharashtra Government’s writ petition which sought the Centre to make public the raw data gathered in the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), the BJP, then in the opposition, along with OBC leaders in Maharashtra, including Mr. Bhujbal, had blamed the ruling tripartite ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ coalition’s (of which Mr. Bhujbal was a part) for “delaying tactics” and alleged “inefficiency” for having cost reservation to the OBCs.