Her statement comes a day after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar said he had asked for an appointment to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the tricky issue.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Friday said her party will support the central government both in Parliament and outside it, if it takes constructive steps for conducting census of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
Her statement comes a day after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar said he had asked for an appointment to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the tricky issue of caste-based census which the Centre has proposed to hold only for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
“BSP has been demanding census of OBCs in the country. If the central government takes any positive step in this direction, BSP will definitely support it both inside and outside the Parliament,” Mayawati said in a tweet in Hindi.
Earlier on Thursday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar pressed for a caste-based census in the state, and said he had requested an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the subject but had not received a response till now.
Earlier, parliamentarians belonging to Mr Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU) had been denied a meeting with PM Modi and had been told they should meet with Union Home Minister Amit Shah instead.
Worries that a caste census will upset some people are without basis, the Bihar CM has stressed.
“It is up to the Centre to do a caste census or not… our job is to put forth our views. Do not think that one caste will like and another will not… It is in everyone’s interest,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“No tension will be created in the society. There will be happiness… People from every strata will benefit from schemes,” he told reporters, adding that such a census “happened under British rule too”.
Now Mayawati comming into the support of OBC census ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year mean the issue is going to the key factor in the politics of Hindi heartland.
Nitish Kumar’s ally BJP has expressed concerns over caste-based Census. Bihar BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal had said it might have an adverse impact on social amity.
Junior Home Minister Nityanand Rai, in a response to a question in Lok Sabha last month, has said: “The Government of India has decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCs and STs in Census”.
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