Facing intense criticism from its own base, the BJP on Friday sought to justify Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a caste census as “a significant step toward ensuring genuine social justice” in India.
New Delhi:Facing intense criticism from its own base, the BJP on Friday sought to justify Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a caste census as “a significant step toward ensuring genuine social justice” in India. The exercise, slated to form part of the next decennial population count, has drawn fire from party workers and upper-caste leaders who argue it undermines merit and betrays longstanding BJP positions.
BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya, in a detailed post on X, contrasted the forthcoming survey with the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), which he said yielded “unusable data and absurd outcomes,” such as cataloguing over 4.6 million caste entries. He asserted the new census will be “more focused, accurate, and purpose-driven,” reinforcing “that affirmative action must be based on social and educational backwardness, not religious identity.”
Malviya added that the updated survey will help identify the most deprived sub-groups within the OBC, SC, and ST categories, enabling fairer sub-classification and preventing larger groups from monopolizing quotas. He warned against repeating what he called a “failed attempt” in 2011 by the previous Congress government, which had tried—but failed in court—to carve out a 4.5 percent minority sub-quota within the OBC category.
However, BJP karyakartas and social-media supporters, who have long derided the Congress’s “Jitni Abadi Utna Haq” slogan and its caste-census demand as divisive, now find themselves scrambling for explanations. Many expressed feelings of “betrayal” online, and local leaders report a deluge of complaints from upper-caste voters concerned about expanding reservation.
Senior party figures acknowledge that clarifying how the new census will differ from SECC 2011—and countering opposition charges of a policy U-turn—remains their immediate challenge. Meanwhile, the BJP has rolled out videos promoting April 30, 2025 (the announcement date), as a “historic milestone” and vowing that the exercise will safeguard the constitutional rights of OBCs, SCs, and STs through “evidence-based representation.”
