Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses a press conference at AICC office in New Delhi on April 30, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
Welcoming what he described as a “sudden announcement” of the nationwide caste censusthe Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday demanded a timeline for its completion, and urged the Centre to remove the 50% cap on reservations, and ensure quotas in private educational institutions under Article 15(5) of the Constitution.
The Congress party’s efforts to pressurise the government had worked, Mr. Gandhi said, but he was quick to add the caste census should not be like the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023, that is, without a specific timeline.
“This [the caste census] was our model. I am glad they have adopted it but [what] we want is that we are given the dates by when this will be done, and there should budgetary provision for this,” Mr. Gandhi said at a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office here, flanked by the party’s general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal, and communications chief Jairam Ramesh.
Mr. Gandhi said the Centre should follow the ‘Telangana census model’, and offered to help the Centre in designing a similar model. “In Telangana, the questions have been developed by a process of consultation — not a closed but an open process. We want the national [caste] census to follow some of the ideas, and we would be more than happy to help the government develop the national census on similar lines,” the Congress leader said.
The former Congress chief, who has been demanding a caste census for the past two years in his push for social justice, claimed that the 50% cap on reservations was “becoming an impediment to the progress of backward castes, Dalits and Adivasis, and it needs to be demolished”.
“We want to go beyond the caste census and understand what is the participation of 90% of our population in the power structure of the country…And we want to give them access to power,” he said, terming the caste census a new paradigm of development.
Mr. Gandhi also used the press briefing to address Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly, and said those involved in the Pahalgam terror attack must pay the price.
“Whoever they are, wherever they are, they have to pay for it, and they have to pay for it properly, [and] not in some half-hearted way,” Mr. Gandhi said, adding, “The Prime Minister must not dilly-dally, must not waste time, must make it very clear that India is not going to tolerate this nonsense. He can act in whatever time frame he thinks necessary, but he has to act soon.”
The Opposition leader refused to get into the timing of the announcement in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack, and the Assembly election in Bihar later this year. “You are a journalist; you can speculate. I work with facts,” Mr. Gandhi said in response to a question on the timing of the caste census announcement.
Published – April 30, 2025 08:16 pm is
