New Delhi: Even as the Congress doubled down on its demand for a nation-wide caste census Monday, senior leaders debated the viability of demanding an increase in the SC- mandated 50 percent cap on reservations.
Along the lines of its ‘Jitni Abaadi, Utna Haq’ slogan, the party, after a meeting of its highest decision making body, adopted a resolution promising to legislatively remove the 50 percent cap on reservations of the OBCs, SCs and STs, in line with their “commensurate share in population”. However, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting saw a debate featuring senior leaders Manish Tewari, B.K. Hariprasad, Bhupesh Baghel and Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
Tewari argued that demanding an increase in the reservation ceiling could be a slippery slope as going past the courts will be difficult, ThePrint has learnt.
“Manish Tewari raised an objection to the demand for increasing the 50 percent cap as he said earlier Supreme Court rulings had quashed such a demand,” a CWC member said.
To this, the CWC member said, senior Karnataka leader B.K. Hariprasad argued that the courts had rejected such pleas due to lack of data, making a caste census imperative.
“Hariprasad argued that the courts had made an observation and had not given an order. He said that an observation was being read as a judgement. When the court rejected such pleas, they asked ‘Where is the data?’. He said that this is why a caste census is required to fulfil (Rahul) Gandhi’s vision of public welfare delivered to every last person,” the CWC member said.
A second leader said that Hariprasad was backed by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel who pressed on the need to talk about increasing the reservation ceiling. Baghel said that ahead of the state elections, this demand would resonate with the electorate which has an OBC population of over 45 percent.
“After Baghel, Singhvi, another legal luminary within the party, did not support his fellow lawyer Manish Tewari and sided with Hariprasad. Singhvi, too, agreed that the courts may reconsider the 50 percent cap if they were presented with data,” the leader said.
The CWC resolution stated that if the Congress is voted to power in 2024, it will conduct a caste census along with the normal decadal census which was due in 2021. Welcoming the Bihar caste census, it further stated that a Congress government would do away with the “obstacles” of the census and delimitation put in place by the Modi government for the implementation of the women’s reservation in legislative bodies.
After the meeting, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi announced that the chief ministers of all four Congres-ruled states of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were “actioning” a caste census in their states.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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