Days after the Centre told the Supreme court that collection of Other Backward Classes (OBC) information in census 2021 is not feasible, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday slammed the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) saying the ruling party is not in favour of giving OBCs their 'rights proportional to their population'.
Taking to Twitter, Akhilesh Yadav said, "By rejecting the long-standing demand for enumeration of 'OBC' society, the BJP government has proved that it does not want to count the 'Other Backward Classes' because it does not want to give rights to the OBCs in proportion to their population."
"The BJP, which is a supporter of money and power, has been opposed to social justice from the very beginning," he alleged further.
Earlier, leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav also questioned the Centre's affidavit and asked that if not allowing the caste census was indeed a conscious decision of the BJP, then why did its MLAs in Bihar agree to pass the proposal favouring caste census?
He added, "We are currently waiting for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's reaction and statements on the matter. We have given him 2-3 days for that. Only after that, our action plan will be decided."
The Central government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme court on Thursday saying that the census of backward classes is "administratively difficult" and will suffer both on account of completeness and accuracy.
The Centre, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court said the exclusion of any caste other than Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe from the purview of the upcoming 2021 Census is a "conscious policy decision" taken by the Central government.
The affidavit of the Central government was filed on a plea of the Maharashtra government asking to share census data of OBCs collected by the Centre in 2011-2013.
( With inputs from ANI )
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