Min: Caste survey to ensure social justice
Lucknow: Terming the Centre's decision to conduct a caste survey as 'historic', UP minister and state BJP OBC morcha chief
Narendra Kashyap
said that the step will help the deprived, backward and neglected sections of society gain a rightful identity.
Addressing reporters at the state party office, Kashyap said that the survey was a step towards
social justice
. "This decision will prove effective in changing lives of 1.4 billion citizens and addressing their social, educational, economic, and political needs," he said and added that
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
followed the ideology of "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas". "Each of his decisions proves effective in taking the country to new heights of development," he said.
"This will write a new chapter of development for the backward society," the minister said, noting that it is for the first time in the country that a survey of backward and extremely backward castes will be conducted.
He slammed the Congress for ruling the country for 60 years but not mustering the courage to conduct a caste survey. "It deceived the backward society with false promises," he charged, accusing the grand old party of adopting a double-faced approach towards the
backward classes
.
"The reality is that Congress govts have opposed caste-based census until now," he said, adding that despite giving assurances in Parliament in 2010, the Congress did not conduct a caste-based census.
Lucknow: Terming the Centre's decision to conduct a
caste census
as 'historic', UP minister and state BJP OBC morcha chief Narendra Kashyap said that the step will help the deprived, backward and neglected sections of society gain a rightful identity.
Addressing reporters at the state party office, Kashyap said that the caste census was a step towards social justice. "This decision will prove effective in changing lives of 1.4 billion citizens and addressing their social, educational, economic, and political needs," he said and added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed the ideology of "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas". "Each of his decisions proves effective in taking the country to new heights of development," he said.
"This will write a new chapter of development for the backward society," the minister said, noting that it is for the first time in the country that a census of backward and extremely backward castes will be conducted.
He slammed the Congress for ruling the country for 60 years but not mustering the courage to conduct a caste census. "It deceived the backward society with false promises," he charged, accusing the grand old party of adopting a double-faced approach towards the backward classes.
"The reality is that Congress govts have opposed caste-based census until now," he said, adding that despite giving assurances in Parliament in 2010, the Congress did not conduct a caste-based census. He said that the previous Manmohan Singh govt only conducted a survey in the name of social, economic, and caste census.
He said that the caste census will eliminate inequality and further empower the socially, economically, and educationally backward classes, while opening new paths for the holistic development of the deprived and neglected sections.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
21 minutes ago
- Mint
Govt appoints RBI DG T Rabi Sankar as 16th FinComm member
New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI) RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar has been appointed as a part-time member of the 16th Finance Commission, the finance ministry said on Saturday. The appointment, the ministry said, is consequent to the resignation of one of the full-time members, former finance secretary Ajay Narayan Jha, on personal grounds. "The President has appointed T Rabi Sankar, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as a part-time Member of the 16th Finance Commission (XVIFC)," the ministry said in a statement. Sankar will hold office from the date of assuming charge until the submission of the Commission's Report or October 31, 2025, whichever is earlier, it added. The commission, chaired by former vice chairman of Niti Aayog Arvind Panagariya, has four members and is assisted by Secretary Ritvik Pandey, two joint secretaries and one economic advisor. Retired bureaucrat Annie George Mathew and economist Manoj Panda are full-time members of the commission, while SBI Group Chief Economic Advisor Soumya Kanti Ghosh is a part-time member. The government constituted the 16th Finance Commission under the chairmanship of Panagariya on December 31, 2023. The panel would submit its report to the President by October 31, 2025. The report would be for five years commencing April 1, 2026. Besides suggesting tax devolution between the Centre and states and revenue augmentation measures, the commission will review the present arrangements for financing disaster management initiatives with reference to the funds constituted under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. The Finance Commission is a constitutional body to provide suggestions on centre-state financial relations. The erstwhile 15th Finance Commission under NK Singh had recommended that states be given 41 per cent of the divisible tax pool of the Centre during the five-year period 2021-22 to 2025-26, which is at the same level as was recommended by the 14th Finance Commission under YV Reddy.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
26 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Trump's expanding use of emergency powers raises alarms among experts
Call it the 911 presidency. Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors. Whether it's levelling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump's 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors. The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress' authority and advance his agenda. What's notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president, said Ilya Somin, who is representing five US businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs. Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it. Growing concerns over actions The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump's strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there's growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the US is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address. The temptation is clear, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Programme and an expert in emergency powers. What's remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we're in a different era now. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy. It's the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit, Bacon said of Congress' power over trade. And I get the emergency powers, but I think it's being abused. When you're trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that's policy, not emergency action. The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority. President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump frequently sites 1977 law to justify actions Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports. The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces an unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States. In analysing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on US soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the US economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion. Congress has ceded its power to the presidency Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Centre for Justice. Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-September 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The US Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals. Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II. Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump's eventual veto. Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges, said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act. Trump, Yoo said, has just elevated it to another level. Trump's allies support his moves Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump's actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy. We believe and we're right that we are in an emergency, Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax. You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies, Vance said. I'm not talking about toys, plastic toys. I'm talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I'm talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain. Vance continued, These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president's emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance. Similar legislation hasn't been introduced since Trump's return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency. He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there's oversight and safeguards, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a path toward autocracy and suppression.
Indian Express
27 minutes ago
- Indian Express
‘Some have habit of creating doubts': Minister Bhupender Yadav rebuts Jairam Ramesh on Delhi Zoo privatization concerns
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav Saturday rebutted questions and privatization concerns raised by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh regarding the Delhi Zoo and an agreement proposed between the Centre-run establishment and Reliance-run Greens Zoological, Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (GZRRC). In a post on social media platform X, Yadav said that the National Zoological Park (NZP), which is run by the Centre, had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GZRRC, based in Gujarat's Jamnagar, in January 2021, and NZP has sought to revise the existing MoU. He said NZP has signed MoUs with different organisations working in wildlife management in the past as part of its modernisation drive and will continue to do so. Replying to Ramesh's post, Yadav said, 'Some people have made it a habit to create doubts in the mind of the public at every instance.' Ramesh had said on June 4 that while the government 'claims that this is not a management transfer, its past record does not inspire confidence. Is this the first step towards handing over the zoo to a private enterprise?' Yadav said that the 2021 MoU between NZP and GZRRC focused on the exchange of animals, capacity building, animal keepers, technical exchanges on the scientific management of animals, and sharing knowledge on conservation breeding and education. 'Keeping in line with the common objectives of captive wildlife management and for further broadening the collaboration as per current management requirements, NZP sought to revise the existing MoU with GZRRC. The proposed MoU aims to foster collaboration in wildlife conservation, rescue, rehabilitation, animal health, and welfare,' Yadav said. The key areas of cooperation, he added, include support for veterinary care, enclosure design, enrichment, staff training, knowledge-sharing initiatives, and potential animal exchanges. Yadav added in his post that GZRRC has developed state-of-the-art facilities and services in animal health and welfare, world-class zoo designing, rescue and rehabilitation of wild animals, and habitat enrichment. NZP, he said, being a 60-year-old institution, has gained substantial expertise in breeding and care of many endangered species and is aiming to modernise its facilities and services by adopting best practices in animal welfare in captivity, as well as enhanced visitor experience, on par with a world-class zoo. The Central Zoo Authority granted approval to GZRCC in February 2019, and an initial recognition was granted in August 2020. As per its latest available annual report, GZRRC is home to 10,360 animals of 345 species. Most animals housed at GZRRC are 'part of its initiative to rescue captive animals from impoverished conditions in zoos and facilities in the nature of zoos, to decongest them and provide welfare to animals that were housed under sub-optimal conditions,' the annual report states. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited and inaugurated Vantara, the rescue facility at Jamnagar, on March 4 this year.
