'PM Modi wants to abolish reservations', alleges Jairam Ramesh

NEW DELHI: Alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to end caste based reservations in the country, the Congress today asked him to clarify his stand on whether he was against the socio-economic caste based census in the country.

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here today, the party general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh pointed out Modi government did not get the mandatory 2021 census done till now.

He pointed out the census is very important for the caste based reservations provided by the constitution. He alleged that Modi was deliberately avoiding the census since he wanted to abolish reservations in the country.

Jairam disclosed that during the UPA regime, a socio-economic caste census was done in 2011 to prepare the list of people living below poverty line, to make available authentic data about the population of SCs, STs and backward classes and to find out their socio-economic and educational conditions.

He said the Modi government did not publish the report, as he did not want the people of the country to know the details. He said the census was done following a detailed debate in the parliament as all the parties including the BJP wanted to get it done.

The Congress general secretary said, since the Modi government had not conducted the 2021 census, about ten crore people were being denied the benefit under the Food Security Act, which has been renamed as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.