Bihar to conduct ‘caste census’, says Nitish after all-party meet

Bihar will conduct a caste-wise enumeration of its population in a timebound manner and a cabinet decision would soon be taken in this regard after working out the modalities as it would require training to a large number of personnel, chief minister Nitish Kumar said after a meeting with the legislature party leaders of all the political parties in the state in Patna on Wednesday.

Bihar will conduct a caste-wise enumeration of its population in a timebound manner and a cabinet decision would soon be taken in this regard after working out the modalities as it would require training to a large number of personnel, chief minister Nitish Kumar said after a meeting with the legislature party leaders of all the political parties in the state in Patna on Wednesday.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar along with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav , deputy chief minister Tarkishore Prasad and others addresses a press conference after the all party meeting on the caste census in Patna on Wednesday.

“It will take into account all the aspects related to every caste and subcaste within all religious groups to get a clear picture of their actual status for help in planning for their uplift. The ultimate objective is to ensure development with justice to all. The government will publish advertisements to make everyone aware of it and train personnel for the specific job so that nobody is left out. With Bihar assembly having passed two unanimous resolutions favouring a caste-based census, there has always been unanimity on the subject in the state,” said Kumar, who was flanked by deputy CM Tarkishore Prasad, state BJP president Dr Sanjay Jaiswal and former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi.

The CM said the BJP was not opposed to the exercise, rather it had only expressed its inability to conduct it on the national scale due to certain issues. “The states are free to do it and they have been doing it. Once all the states do it, it will automatically become national,” he said.

In India, the population census is a Union subject (Article 246). The Centre did commence the socio-economic and caste census in 2011 through a comprehensive door-to-door enumeration, but the results never came into the public domain after a large number of discrepancies were reported.

Last year, the Centre had ruled out a caste-wise enumeration in the Census 2021, which was delayed primarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The last caste census in India was held in 1931, during the British rule.

Meanwhile, Bihar’s leader of Opposition Tejaswhi Prasad Yadav termed the decision as a victory for his party RJD and for his father Lalu Prasad’s ideology. Yadav said it would have been better had the Centre agreed to a caste count as part of the census, but it is good the state had government has finally agreed for what RJD chief Lalu Prasad had been advocating all along. “With 39 of the 40 MPs in Bihar from the NDA, we would like the issue to be raised in Parliament for central assistance to carry out this huge exercise, which will have huge costs involved. Had Centre done it, this could have been saved by adding just an additional column in the Census,” he said.

Tejaswhi Yadav said he was hopeful the CM would take a decision in the very next Cabinet. “We would like the modalities to be worked out during the monsoon period when floods are also a recurring feature so that the actual survey could start in November, the period coinciding with important festivals like Chhath and Dussehra when all the migrants also come home,” he said.

RJD’s Manoj Jha, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, hailed the “historic day”. “II am happy the CM adopted the resolution moved by Tejashwi Yadav verbatim and assured to get down to work from tomorrow itself. I hope to see results starting to emerge within the next 24 hours,” he said.