SP attacks Congress over caste census, but relies on turncoats in MP election

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday attacked its INDIA ally Congress over its demand for a caste census, and asked why the party did not conduct such an exercise when it was in power at the Centre.

Updated on: Nov 15, 2023, 06:52:19 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday attacked its Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) ally Congress over its demand for a caste census, and asked why the party did not conduct such an exercise when it was in power at the Centre.

Yadav also termed the Congress’s demand a “miracle” and took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his remark that a caste census would serve as an “X-ray” to understand details of various communities.

“The previous governments did not act on a caste census due to their faulty policies,” Yadav said in Satna district of poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

“An X-ray was the need of thattime. Now, we have MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computed tomography) scans. The disease has now spread. If this problem was solved back then, such a gap wouldn’t have existed in society today.” he added.

After the Bihar government announced the findings of the state’s caste survey in October, several Opposition parties, including the Congress, have been pressing for a similar exercise and revisiting the reservation formula to ensure adequate representation of various castes based on their numbers.

Gandhi has been pushing for ‘Jitni Abadi, Utna Haq’ (representation as per numbers). Other political parties that are part of the INDIA bloc such as the SP, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United) too have been demanding a caste-based enumeration.

The issue has also been raised in various states, particularly in poll-bound Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

On Monday, Gandhi reiterated his party’s commitment to holding a caste census in Madhya Pradesh if it is voted to power in the assembly elections.

“If we come to power in the state, we guarantee that we will conduct a caste census. Everybody needs to know about their strength in the country,” he said during a poll campaign in the state’s Neemuch district.

Voting in Madhya Pradesh is scheduled to be held on November 17; the results will be declared on December 3.

It is not for the first time that Yadav has attacked the Congress amid INDIA bloc’s attempts to forge unity to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre in the Lok Sabha elections next year.

The two parties have been at loggerheads following the breakdown in seat-sharing talks for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections. While the SP has accused the Congress of not following the “coalition dharma”, the latter accused the SP of not sharing names of its possible candidates for the seats being offered.

A former MP Samajwadi Party chief, who was not willing to be named, said the Congress was willing to give four seats to the SP in the state and wanted to know names of the candidates for these seats. “The SP was not willing to provide the names, saying the Congress cannot interfere in the party’s ticket selection,” the leader said.

However, despite the ongoing feud between the two parties, the SP is relying on a number of Congress rebels to make a mark in the heartland state, an SP leader said. “The SP is likely to have an impact on a handful of seats,” the leader said, seeking anonymity.

Of the 14 candidates fielded by SP in Vindhya, and Bundelkhand regions of MP and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, 10 are Congress rebels. Similarly, in Gwalior-Chambal region, of the 12 candidates fielded by the party, eight are Congress rebels.

The vote share of the Akhilesh Uadav-led party in MP has seen a decline in recent years. In 2008, it secured roughly 3.5% of the votes and had three MLAs. A decade later, its vote share fell to 1.3% and had one lawmaker in the 230-member MP assembly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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