India News | Fake 56-inch Chest Vs 56 Questions: Congress Asks Govt to Adopt Telangana Model for Caste Survey
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The Centre must adopt the Telangana model if it is honest in carrying out a caste survey, the Congress asserted on Friday and said the issue was about a "fake 56-inch chest versus 56 questions of social justice" that were asked by the Revanth Reddy-led government.
New Delhi, May 2 (PTI) The Centre must adopt the Telangana model if it is honest in carrying out a caste survey, the Congress asserted on Friday and said the issue was about a "fake 56-inch chest versus 56 questions of social justice" that were asked by the Revanth Reddy-led government.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting that the caste enumeration exercise was the first step and reiterated the demand that the government must remove the 50 per cent cap on reservation and implement Article 15(5) of the Constitution, which pertains to reservation in private educational institutions, according to AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh.
"Rahul ji said if you do the census honestly, then you will have to adopt the Telangana model," Ramesh said.
Addressing a press conference after the CWC meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, he said, "We were criticised, we were targeted and suddenly, when the whole country was mourning the Pahalgam incident, this decision was taken. Why was it taken, these questions arise."
The issue today is about a "fake 56-inch chest versus 56 questions of social justice" that were asked by the Revanth Reddy-led government in Telangana, Ramesh said.
The Congress often uses the phrase "56-inch chest" to attack the prime minister in reference to his remarks in a speech years ago.
"What are the details of caste census? Where is the caste census questionnaire? No budget has been allocated for this," Ramesh said.
The Congress on Friday asked the government to announce a "clear timeline" for every stage of the survey and reiterated its demand for removing the "arbitrary ceiling" of 50 per cent on reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
The opposition party made the assertion in a resolution passed by the CWC chaired by Kharge and attended by former Congress chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and general secretaries Ramesh, KC Venugopal and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, among others.
"After 11 years of continued opposition and stubborn refusal, the Modi government has finally conceded to the demand of the Congress to collect population data caste wise as part of the next census. For 11 years, the prime minister attacked the Congress leadership for raising this demand," the CWC said in the resolution.
No details, however, have been provided of what the government intends to do and no financial allocations have been made, it said.
The government on Wednesday announced that caste enumeration would be included in the forthcoming census exercise in a "transparent" manner and slammed the opposition parties for using the caste survey as a "political tool".
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)