Bhopal: The Congress party will conduct a caste census in Madhya Pradesh if voted to power in the state which goes to the polls later this year, party president Mallikarjun Kharge declared Tuesday.
The announcement comes at a time when the ‘caste survey’ being carried out in Bihar by the Nitish Kumar-led government, of which the Congress is a part, is facing judicial scrutiny. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had in the run up to polls in Karnataka demanded that the Centre make public findings of the socio-economic caste census carried out by the UPA.
The Congress’s renewed pitch for a caste census in Madhya Pradesh is being seen as a bid to woo OBCs and as a counter to the BJP’s Hindutva politics.
Addressing a ‘Jan Akrosh rally’ in Sagar in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, Kharge also announced that the Congress will set up a university to be named after Saint Ravidas in Sagar district, provide loan waivers to farmers, Rs 1,500 to women, free electricity up to 100 units and LPG cylinders at Rs 500 apiece if voted to power in the state.
लाइव: विशाल जनसभा
मध्य प्रदेश में परिवर्तन लहर चल चुकी है।
📍सागर https://t.co/NVZICK8W7L
— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) August 22, 2023
Kharge, a prominent Dalit face of the Congress, addressed the public meeting in Sagar exactly 10 days after Prime Minister Modi performed a ‘bhoomi pujan’ before laying the foundation stone for a temple-cum-memorial of Sant Ravidas there on 12 August.
Earlier this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced construction of the Sant Shiromani Gurudev Shri Ravidas ji memorial in Badtuma village at a cost of Rs 100 crore to showcase the teachings of Sant Ravidas. Its construction, he said, will involve soil to be brought for this purpose from more than 20,000 villages and water from 300 rivers.
The SCs make up about 16 percent of the population in Madhya Pradesh, where 35 of the total 230 assembly seats are reserved for SC candidates and where SC votes play a decisive role in another 19 seats. During the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress had won 17 of these 35 seats, while the remaining 18 had gone to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Bundelkhand region comprising Sagar, Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Niwari, Damoh and Panna districts accounts for a total of 26 seats. The BJP won 15 of these in 2018 and the Congress nine, while one each went to Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Also Read: ‘Special focus on defectors’: In MP, Congress woos disgruntled BJP leaders to checkmate CM Chouhan
‘Not for votes, but upliftment’
Referring to the construction of a memorial in honour of Sant Ravidas, Kharge accused CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and PM Narendra Modi of making efforts to appease Dalit voters ahead of the upcoming elections.
“Modi and Shivraj have only come to remember Sant Ravidas before the election, despite being in power for 18 years,” he said, before referring to the demolition of a 15th-century Ravidas temple by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in August 2019 following a Supreme Court order. “They (BJP) do everything only as a means of getting votes,” he said.
A key figure associated with the Bhakti movement, Sant Ravidas propagated for removal of caste and gender discrimination through his poetry, which gained prominence over the time.
Kharge then went on to announce that a university would be constructed in Sant Ravidas’s name to recognise his teachings if Congress were to come to power in the state. “This is not for elections and votes like how BJP does, but it is instead for the upliftment of the people from our heart,” he said.
On 20 August, Union Home Minister Amit Shah launched the BJP’s report card to highlight the party’s record of governance in Madhya Pradesh between 2003 and 2023. The BJP, he said, successfully transformed MP from a ‘BIMARU’ or laggard state and put it on the path to development.
Kharge responded to Amit Shah’s question on what Congress had done in the past 53 years by saying, “We fought for Independence, gave you the Constitution and saved democracy. Had we not saved the Constitution and democracy, there would be no Modi, Shah or Chouhan.”
Hinting at the work done by Congress governments in the state, Kharge asked, “Who set up the Bhilai Steel Plant, the Indira Sagar Dam, IIT and IIM in Indore, AIIMS and MANIT in Bhopal and who gave the Chambal Ghati project?”
“This is a broad report of what we did to provide employment to people, empower them and make them intelligent. From Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Rajiv Gandhi, everyone knows what we are doing,” he said.
Kharge then asked PM Modi to give a report card of the work done during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat and as prime minister.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Women’s empowerment or election freebie? Inside MP govt’s Rs 8,000-cr ‘Ladli Behna’ scheme