Union minister Chirag Paswan has come out in support of the caste census, while a few days ago he opposed the BJP government’s lateral entry move. The LJP leader is an ally of the ruling party. “My party (LJP) has always kept its stand clear that it is in favour of caste census,” he said at a press conference on Sunday, India Today reported.
Elaborating his stance, he said, “The reason for this is that many times the state and central governments make various schemes keeping in mind the caste of the beneficiaries. Those schemes are prepared with the idea of ​​connecting people of the ‘backward’ class to the mainstream.”
The LJP leader said that only when the central government has information about caste-wise population, it will be able to properly distribute resources and scheme benefits. Paswan, the Union Minister for Food Processing Industries, had earlier spoken against lateral entry appointments in government jobs, calling such a system in civil services “completely wrong”.
Paswan’s remarks are against the party he is in alliance with – the BJP. In Parliament, the BJP has been opposing the opposition’s efforts to implement a nationwide caste census. The Congress, with which Paswan has expressed ideological differences, had said in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections that if they came to power, they would conduct a socio-economic caste census across the country. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also promised during the election to conduct a survey to measure the distribution of wealth among individuals and institutions in the country.
