New Delhi: Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that caste census was no politics for him but his life’s mission and his party will conduct it without fail once it forms a government at the Centre.
Addressing the Samajik Nyay Sammelan at Jawahar Bhawan here, the Congress leader mounted a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), declaring that all “so-called deshbhakts” were running scared from the moment he floated the idea of an ‘X-ray’ of the caste system.
Asserting that no force will be able to stop the census, the Wayanad MP said, “Caste census is not politics for me but it is the mission of my life. As soon as the Congress Government comes to power at the Centre, we will immediately conduct caste census and it is my guarantee.”
Stating that all sections of the society were not getting their dues, Gandhi said that there was hardly any presence of Dalits, Adivasis or OBCs in the management strata of the media or at private hospitals and big companies and for that even in the judiciary, especially if one considers the apex level.
“I am not interested in caste but in ‘Nyay’. In India injustice is being done to 90 per cent of the people. We said that we need to find out how much injustice is happening and this is possible only through a caste census.
“On hearing this, both PM Narendra Modi and his handpicked media panicked. Don’t you need an X-ray when injured?” he asked, adding that the census will be that very X-ray.
“As soon as I used the word X-ray, the Prime Minister and a particular section of the media started accusing me of trying to divide the country,” he said.
Gandhi also slammed the BJP for telling the media that he was “non-serious and not interested in politics”.
He questioned, “Was raising the issue of MNREGA non-serious? Or the land acquisition bill, or Bhatta Parsaul was non-serious and Samajik Nyay was non-serious?”
He also accused the Prime Minister of waiving Rs 16 lakh crore debt of 25 of his ‘billionaire friends’ comparing that the same amount could have been used to waive off the loans of poor farmers of the country and save them from ending their lives.
Terming his party’s manifesto as ‘revolutionary’, he declared that the Prime Minister has panicked after seeing the Nyay Patra and as such he has been reacting and passing remarks on it.
