NEW DELHI: With Uttar Pradesh headed for assembly elections next year, a contest widely billed as the ‘semi-finale’ before the 2029 Lok Sabha battle, Rahul Gandhi has once again put OBC politics, caste census, and reservations at the centre of the Congress campaign.
The timing is deliberate. Uttar Pradesh sends more MPs to Parliament than any other state, and whoever controls Lucknow shapes the national narrative going into the next general election.
At the heart of Rahul Gandhi’s latest offensive is a technical-sounding but politically loaded complaint: the ongoing national census does not carry a dedicated OBC column. The Congress argues this is not an oversight but a deliberate dilution, calling the absence of an OBC field in the questionnaire a serious concern and accusing the government of trying to weaken the caste census exercise.
This complaint arrives at an awkward moment for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). After years of resisting the demand, the Modi government relented and agreed to conduct a caste enumeration alongside the delayed decennial census. For the Congress, that concession itself was proof that sustained pressure had worked. But having won the principle, the Congress is now contesting the method.
Rahul Gandhi has revived a slogan with deep roots in Mandal-era politics: representation in proportion to population. Congress has repackaged it for the current moment, pairing the demand for accurate enumeration with a call to lift the 50% cap on reservations once real numbers are available.
Rahul Gandhi has framed the caste census as an ‘X-ray of India’, a foundational data exercise, not merely an electoral talking point. He argues that policy cannot be designed for communities that have never been properly counted.
The BJP has pushed back hard, branding Congress “anti-OBC” and “anti-reservation”. BJP spokespersons have pointed to the party’s own record of promoting OBC leadership at the state and national level, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s backward-caste identity. They have accused Rahul Gandhi of hypocrisy, noting that Rajiv Gandhi had opposed OBC reservations in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
OBC support had propelled the BJP to form a government with record mandates in 2014 and 2019. The BJP’s support from upper and lower OBCs almost doubled in 2019 compared to 2014, and this has come at the cost of Congress as well as Others (regional and smaller parties/Independents).
In 2024, however, the BJP lost 2% support amongst upper OBCs while gaining similar numbers from lower OBC groups. The Congress, on the other hand, gained 5% from upper OBCs and 8% from lower OBCs, riding on its “samvidhan khatre mein hai” (Constitution is in danger) campaign and the caste census plank.
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