Chennai, Sep 17 (IANS) The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) will launch a statewide campaign on Thursday to highlight what it describes as serious shortcomings in the Centre’s proposed method of collecting caste data during the population census.
TNCC president and Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore said the campaign would cover 10 major cities across Tamil Nadu through public meetings and interactive discussions. It will oppose the use of open-ended questions for recording caste details and advocate a drop-down system based on predefined community lists, which the party believes will produce more reliable data for framing social justice policies.
AICC general secretary and Tamil Nadu in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir and Dravidar Kazhagam president K. Veeramani will participate in the launch of the campaign.
In a statement, Tagore accused the BJP-led Union government of attempting to prevent backward-class communities from securing adequate representation by concealing the actual size of the Other Backward Classes population.
He said the Centre had earlier deferred the caste census by citing issues connected with delimitation. It has now proposed collecting caste information relating to Scheduled Castes and OBCs through open-ended questions, claiming that no comprehensive list of OBC communities was available.
Tagore alleged that the move was part of a deliberate strategy to deny backward communities their rightful share in political power, education and employment.
He questioned why an open-ended format was being proposed for OBCs when clearly defined lists were already available for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.
The second phase of the population census, which will include collection of caste-related information, is considered particularly significant because of its implications for reservation and welfare policies.
Tagore maintained that a predefined drop-down list would reduce errors, prevent duplication and ensure more accurate classification of communities.
The Congress leader also accused the Centre of withholding information on corporate loan write-offs and wilful defaulters.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2015, public-sector institutions, including the Reserve Bank of India and Bank of Baroda, had allegedly declined to disclose the names of corporate borrowers who failed to repay their loans.
Of the Rs 35,716 crore written off, only 28 per cent had been recovered, he claimed.
Responding to the Left parties’ decision to contest the coming bypolls independently, Tagore said he could not comment on their strategy. However, he expressed surprise that parties which had supported the government in the Assembly have chosen to enter the electoral contest separately.
--IANS
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