Bihar Caste Census paused; Nitish Kumar’s Mandal plot derails
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, May 4: The order of the Patna High Court to stay the ongoing caste census in Bihar must be seen as a major setback to the incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The judiciary has stopped the ruling political dispensation from moving ahead with the caste census, which was principally aimed to build the Mandal poll plank for the next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
All state governments maintain data of the backward castes in addition to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The social justice department of the state governments regularly issue caste certificates, as the people from SCs, STs and OBCs are covered under several caste-based schemes.
“We already have data of the backward castes in our state. We need just one click of the mouse to know the number of people from the backward castes besides the SCs and STs. We don’t need to carry out caste census for the purpose, as the social justice department is already issuing caste certificates for decades,” said a top ranking official of a state government.
Bihar was spending over Rs 500 crores to conduct the caste census. There were almost 124 codes against castes which were to be filled by the field surveyors, who moved back and forth to clarify on caste and code quagmire. The people in Bihar read the political script well, as they told the local dailies in their surveys across the districts that they had nothing to gain from the exercise but the government was conducting it for political mileage.
The proponents of the Mandal politics in Bihar in the ruling Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) were waiting to release the caste census data in September this year. But the Nitish Kumar government had ignored the necessity to pass a legislation to give an effect to the caste census, which was questioned by the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court, as the advocate general fumbled to say that the intent was stated in the speech of the Governor of Bihar in the state Assembly. This in itself reveals casual approach, for the state government considered the Governor’s speech to be good enough that there was no need for a law.
The Bihar government has also been caught napping on the privacy law, as concerns now abound that any political activist would be armed with the caste data of each houses in the state.
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