After the Centre’s sudden and what many feel mistimed announcement to hold the Caste Census the Bharatiya Janata Party is Struggling to come out with a fresh strategy in Karnataka, Telangana, and Bihar which had already undertaken this exercise by spending hundreds of crores of rupees.
In the two Congress-ruled states of South India, the saffron party had criticized the Caste Census on the plea that it had overlooked one caste or the other.
In the poll-bound Bihar which had already accomplished this survey in 2023 amidst stiff opposition from the Narendra Modi government the anxious BJP has inadvertently exposed its electoral weakness.
Why has this decision been taken just eight days after the massacre of 26 innocent souls in Pahalgam? Is the party not sure of National Democratic Alliance victory in the Assembly election due in October?
BJP caught in a dilemma
Besides, the saffron party is finding it extremely difficult to take credit because Nitish Kumar was then leading the Grand Alliance government and not the National Democratic Alliance. As the initiative was taken by the then deputy chief minister and present leader of the opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav the BJP has been caught in a dilemma.
Ironically, the Bihar unit of the BJP went against the original stand of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and decided to support the caste census
then. The all-party delegation from Bihar which called on the PM in August 2021 to demand the Caste Census included a BJP member too. It was led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
The work in this regard in Bihar started on January 7 and the report was released on October 2. About Rs 500 crore was spent on it. Karnataka and Telangana spent Rs 165 crore and Rs 150 crore respectively.
Had the issue not been challenged in the Patna High Court and subsequently taken to the Supreme Court where the Union government initially made a flip-flop, the survey work in Bihar could have been
completed earlier. The money spent on it too may have been less.
Though the Narendra Modi government has not given any deadline the Caste Surveys done in different states would become redundant once the pan-India figures come out. But what should these states do with their reports if the Modi government takes longer to conduct its own Caste Census?
U-turns by BJP, JD (U)
The problem with the NDA government in Bihar is that it is being led by Janata Dal (United) and BJP both of which have mastered the art of taking U-turns. If the JD (U) chief minister Nitish Kumar has
changed partners several times, the BJP has a long history of accepting the demands of the opposition parties after strongly opposing them.
Needless to remind Modi had before becoming Prime Minister, on a number of occasions pooh-poohed the Manmohan Singh government’s flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), but when he came to power at the Centre he accepted it.
Similar somersaults were made on Aadhaar, Goods and Service Tax, and Foreign Direct Investment on single brand retail trading.
In the same way, the Centre opposed the farmers’ demands to repeal three farm laws in 2020-21. A year later and after the death of over 800 of them in sit-in protest outside Delhi, Modi finally conceded the demands, which had the support of almost all the opposition parties. Not only that, a National Democratic Alliance constituent, Shiromani Akali Dal snapped ties and its minister resigned from the Union cabinet.
There is a long list of policy decisions taken by the former Congress governments since Independence which the present BJP government has adopted, but not before deriding, mocking, and ridiculing them. In
some cases, it has just changed the name; for example, the Narasimha Rao government’s Look East policy was changed into Act East.
Wrong signal
By announcing the Caste Census on April 30 and earlier addressing a public function in Madhubani district in Bihar on the border with Nepal on April 24 and not in Kashmir, Prime Minister Modi had sent a wrong signal. Recent reactions in social media confirm this fact as many of them who are questioning the timing of these actions are ardent BJP supporters.
What the BJP bigwigs do not understand is that as to how will the rank and file in Bihar, Karnataka, and Telangana go from here. Till now they have been picking holes in the Caste Census conducted in Karnataka and Telangana.
For example, in Karnataka the BJP leaders and workers were trying to cash in on the resentment among a section of Lingayats and Vokkaligas as the Caste Census done there has revealed that the percentage of their population is less than what is being claimed by these two politically dominant castes. The BJP has been alleging that the percentage of these two castes has been under-enumerated. The truth is that the party was actually against the very concept of the Caste Census.
In Telangana, the BJP has repeatedly been criticizing the Caste Census on the plea that it went against the Hindu backward castes of the state as Muslim backward castes have also been included in the OBC list.
Bihar scenario
But what will be the stand of the BJP in Bihar where too the same pattern has been adopted. Hindu upper caste (without Muslim upper caste) form 10.60 percent of the population. If the Muslim upper castes are included then the total upper castes percentage rises to 15.52.
The population of the Other Backward Castes is 27.12% and of Extremely Backward Castes 36.01 percent–their total stands at 63.13 percent.
The population of Scheduled Castes showed a big jump from the 2011 Census—that is from 15.9% to 19.65%.
As Bihar is the first state to go to poll after this latest decision on April 30 it has caught the state unit of the BJP in a fix. Till now the upper caste Hindus were upset over the decision taken by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar then under the pressure of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. Now that the BJP has succumbed to the constant demands of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi what will be the response of the upper castes Hindus, considered as the strongest votaries of the saffron party. They may not shift to
the Grand Alliance in a big way, but their enthusiasm for the BJP has certainly got dampened. Any decline in their turnout to booths on Election Day may impact the NDA’s poll prospects.
| 
