NEW DELHI: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking the government to have a dialogue with all political parties on caste-census, even as he urged the Modi Government to follow the Telangana model of caste survey for the national census.
He also asked the PM not to “conceal anything” in the final caste census and place the socio-economic data of each caste in the public domain. He also reiterated the party’s stance on removing the 50% ceiling imposed by the Supreme Court on reservation by amending the Constitution.
In his letter, excerpts of which he shared on X, Kharge gave the following suggestions: a questionnaire based on the “Telangana model”, a constitutional amendment to remove the “forcibly imposed” 50 per cent reservation cap regardless of the caste survey results, and “immediate implementation” of Article 15(5) for reservations to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in private educational institutions.
A caste survey was conducted by Congress-ruled Telangana, and the results were announced in February. Since the government’s announcement of caste census, the grand old party has been demanding that “Telangana model” be adopted for the pan-India exercise.
