Caste census: Has Modi govt pulled carpet from under it, or can Rahul, Congress claim ground?
The BJP government's surprise announcement to include caste enumeration in the overdue Census exercise is both good news and bad news for the main opposition Congress and particularly its leader Rahul Gandhi, who has led the demand for it for the past two years. In his words, a caste census is the required 'X-ray of resources' to deliver justice to Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs.
The demand for a caste census has also been the centerpiece of the Congress's social justice agenda to reach out to the OBCs, who have moved away from the party in the post-Mandal period and embraced the BJP since it came to power under Narendra Modi in 2014.
The Congress, especially Gandhi, believes the party can make an electoral comeback only if the backward classes return to it. At the CWC meeting held on the eve of the recent AICC Session in Ahmedabad, he mentioned Uttar Pradesh specifically regarding this.
The apprehension within Congress ranks is that, in one stroke, Modi may have taken away one of its crucial planks. In fact, while announcing its decision on Wednesday to hold a caste census, the government slammed opposition parties for using it as a 'political tool'. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that while census comes under the purview of the Centre, some states had done caste enumeration in the name of surveys 'non-transparently' (a swipe at Congress-ruled Karnataka and Telangana, apart from Bihar).
He added that it was under Congress governments that caste had not been included in Census operations conducted since Independence, showing that it was not really for a caste census but used the issue as a political tool. 'Considering all these facts and to ensure that the social fabric is not disturbed by politics, caste enumeration should be transparently included in the Census instead of surveys,' he said, adding that this will strengthen the social and economic structure of society.
The Congress is hoping to counter this by claiming the announcement as a vindication of its demand.
It was in April 2023 that Gandhi first raised the slogan of 'jitni aabadi, utna haq' or proportional representation, ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections. As the BJP hit back by saying this meant that those with lower numbers would lose out under the Congress, the party moderated its stand later the same year.
In a meeting held in October, the CWC didn't make an argument for proportional representation but passed a resolution that said, 'a nationwide caste census will reveal an accurate picture of the socio-economic position of communities across the country and provide a sound, data-driven basis for policies'.
Gandhi, though, largely stuck to his line and added another layer – the need to breach a general 50% ceiling on reservation set by the Supreme Court.
The Congress manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections promised two things – the party would conduct a nationwide Socio Economic and Caste Census to enumerate castes, sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions if voted to power; and that, based on it, would strengthen its affirmative action including passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50% cap on reservations.
In April last year during the election campaign, Gandhi said: 'As soon as we form the government… the first job would be holding a caste census… Don't think caste census is just caste survey… we will add economic and institutional surveys to that. It means the country will get to know… ki iss jaat main itne log hain, Dalit itne, Adivasi itne, gareeb, general caste itne… Unki aamdani itni hai aur Hindustan ke sansthaon mein inki itni bhagidari hai (that there are these many people in this caste, so many Dalits, Adivasis, poor and the upper castes. That this is their income and this is their share in the institutions of the country).'
The Congress leader said: 'We will hold a financial and institutional survey after that. Yeh pata lagayenge ki Hindustan ka dhan kiske hathon mein hai, kaun se varg ke haath mein hai. Aur is aitihasik kadam ke baad hum krantikari kaam shuru karenge… Jo aapka haq banta jai, woh hum aapke liye aapko dene ka kaam karenge (We will find out who holds the country's wealth, what class of people. And after this historic step, we will take revolutionary measures… What is your right, we will ensure we get it for you).'
PM Modi countered this saying the Congress was planning to 'redistribute wealth', playing up Congress leader Sam Pitroda's remarks on an inheritance tax on the wealthy, and made his famous mangalsutra jibe. 'The Shehzada of the Congress has promised 'X-ray' of people's wealth, meaning what is in the locker, the land, gold, silver, mangalsutra, etc., of the people. Woh kya kehte hain ki aapke paas jo hai, aapse lekar ke jiske paas nahin hai usko de diya jaayega. Matlab jo vote jihad karega, unko diya jaayega (So what they say is that what you have will be taken away from you and given to those who don't have it. This means it will be given to those who wage vote jihad),' Modi said.
At the recent AICC Session in Ahmedabad, the Congress spoke extensively about caste, projecting itself as a trailblazer in implementing reservations. The party's resolution said, 'History bears witness to the fact that when the Supreme Court struck down reservations in 1951, it was the Congress Government under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that enacted the first amendment to the Constitution and added Article 15(4) in the Chapter on Fundamental Rights. Henceforth, the path for reservation based social justice was forever safeguarded.'
It also talked about the Congress-led government implementing the Mandal Commission report in 1993, and giving 27% reservation to OBCs.
The resolution added: 'The Congress Party remains steadfast in our commitment to enact a Central law for the SC/ST Sub Plan and guarantee budgetary allocations in accordance with their population… The Congress Party reaffirms that the fundamental guarantee given under Article 15 (5) (introduced by the Congress on 20th January, 2006) of reservation for OBCs, SCs and STs in private educational institutions must be implemented without delay.'
The other Opposition parties will also take note of the Modi government's move. Among them, the Trinamool Congress has been against the idea of a caste census, though others are in favour. Whether the Congress along with them has the firepower to convince the people that the BJP government's decision came under sustained pressure from them will be the next test.
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The Wire
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Are Election Malpractices Undermining India's Claims of Being ‘the World's Biggest Democracy'?
For the best experience, open on your mobile browser or Download our App. Next Support independent journalism. Donate Now Politics Santosh Mehrotra and Jagdeep Chhokar 8 minutes ago Several methods have emerged in which the will of the people can be dishonoured. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute Now In recent years, the election process in India has been converted into one party's fiefdom. Two sets of methods have been weaponised to subvert the verdict of the people, which are adopted at each stage of the electoral voting system. They are used before voting day, or on the voting day, and after the voting day. We discuss each in turn. Before voting day There are at least three methods used to unfairly impact election results before voting day. First, through electoral rolls or voter lists, which see a selective deletion of voter names from a list. Reports essay the deletion of Yadavs or Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In Delhi, the removal of jhuggi-jhopri (slum resident) voters' names was alleged to be a factor that is likely to have led to the defeat of Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party. Names from voter lists were allegedly deleted ahead of the Delhi elections, as well as Maharashtra state elections. Both occurred in quick succession after the Lok Sabha polls. This is an age-old method which has now been taken to new heights. The founders of Missing Voters, a smartphone app to track disenfranchised voters in India, estimated that nearly 120 million citizens were missing from voter lists in the 2019 national election. More than half of those disenfranchised citizens were Muslims or lower-caste Dalits – minorities who would, put together, normally constitute less than a third of the country's population. Women are also disproportionately affected: the political scientists Prannoy Roy and Dorab Sopariwala calculated in their book released in 2023 that, on average, approximately 40,000 female voters are missing from the electoral rolls in every constituency in India, a number often higher than the winning margin in many Lower House electoral contests. A National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam had declared 1.9 million people potentially stateless, and while Hindus in the list have been promised their paperwork through a new Citizenship Amendment Act, Muslims are left to face detention, and potentially even deportation. Members of the ruling party have promised to expand the NRC across India, sending some Muslims in big cities running to gather their documents lest they need to prove their citizenship to the government. A 2018 study published in the Economic and Political Weekly found that in the May state elections in Karnataka that year, an estimated 1.2 million Muslims were not able to vote – a number that suggested Muslims were disproportionately missing from the electoral rolls. The study was conducted by comparing single-voter households in the state with record population data. The root cause behind the voter registration manipulation is Rule 18 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which allows for deletion of voter data without notice or an opportunity to be heard by the affected citizen. At the EC's assurance, the Supreme Court also disposed of a PIL which challenged the constitutional validity of Rule 18. This has clearly contributed to what many allege are large-scale deletion or addition of votes just before the elections in Maharashtra. It is not difficult to see why Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Adivasis would be the main targets for this electoral roll purge. For the 2019 Lok Sabha election, India had nearly 900 million registered voters and there have been reports of mass deletion of names from voters' lists from Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Delhi. The ECI has denied this. The outcome of such disenfranchisement of minorities is already visible: The 18th Lok Sabha (2024) has the lowest share of Muslim MPs in six decades. Less than 5% of its members currently are Muslims despite people from the community forming over 15% of the country's population. In fact, the decline in the share of the Muslim MPs in the Lok Sabha, in the 1990s, coincided with the rise of the BJP, whose total MP tally crossed the 100 mark for the first time in the 10th Lok Sabha (1991-96). Across India's 28 states, Muslims hold roughly 6% of the seats in state legislatures, which is less than half of their national population percentage. The representation of Christians is no better. The second method is to pay voters cash – bribery on a large scale. Small sums have now increased. The ruling party's hold of funds accumulated through the electoral bonds scheme was enormous. The SC judgment came five years too late, when the money had already been collected, and when the judgment did come, it did not require forfeiture of funds collected over the five years that the scheme was in operation. The ECI says it seized nearly half a billion dollars of cash. As cited by NPR, the last available survey, conducted years ago by Association of Democratic Reforms, suggested it plays a role for nearly 40% of voters. The higher capacity to pay is with the biggest political party, of course. A third method has recently emerged: to insert travelling voters of one party from other states (with duplicate identity cards) to polling booths in a state where elections are taking place, by duplicating Electronic Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers across states. This method was used, allegedly in Maharashtra and Delhi, to general acceptance. In Bengal, there was political upheaval over this. The ECI's response was: 'In this regard, it is clarified that while EPIC numbers of some of the electors may be identical, the other details, including demographic details, Assembly Constituency, and polling booth, are different for the electors with the same EPIC number.' The matter has rested there. These methods supplement a long-standing method that has been to physically prevent anti-government voters from coming out to vote – using state police force. The Ramgarh case in Uttar Pradesh is a classic and prevented the popular leader of the Samajwadi Party, Azam Khan, from being elected. After voting day (but before counting day) We now turn to the king of the insidious deeds being committed in cahoots with the ECI. But before we do that it is important to establish how the appointments of ECI members have been 'used' by the ruling government. Originally, the three members were to be selected from a list finalised by three people: the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and the Chief Justice of India (CJI). That rule was changed by the ruling dispensation. In doing so, the government ignored a November 2023 judgement of the Supreme Court and passed a law in contravention of the court's conclusions by removing the CJI from the appointments committee, and replacing it with a cabinet member nominated by the Union government. This tilted the balance irreversibly in favour of the political executive of the day. The importance of this development will be seen below. To understand how this second set of methods has been used to subvert the electoral verdict of the people, it is important to explain the EVM system. To make the EVM system auditable and voter-verifiable, the Supreme Court had, in 2013, ordered introduction of Voter-Verified-Paper Audit Trail (or VVPATs). But in violation of Supreme Court order, the ECI, in February 2018 directed State Chief Electoral Officers to mandatorily verify VVPAT slips in only one randomly selected polling station in each assembly constituency. There is no statistical basis for this choice. This 0.3% sample size defeated the objective of installing VVPATs in all EVMs. The ECI in later hearings before the same court has stuck to its guns, and days before the April-May 2024 Lok Sabha polls were to begin, the SC accepted, without any basis, the ECI's plea that this sample size is sufficient. There are hardly any countries in the world that have adopted EVMs on the scale on which they have been used in India, for all types of elections. EVMs are nowhere the norm, in the world, certainly not for national elections (though several countries use it for local elections, which have reliable means of auditing EVM vote, especially in the US). We believe that if the EVM is to be continued to be used in India, the only possible way it should be allowed to continue is if the vote is verified by a paper trail in 100% of cases. Now let us turn to the ECI's purported methods for subverting the voter's vote as cast. The absence of a paper trail has enabled the insertion of votes in various constituencies by the hiking of vote percentages in all phases of polling. ECI announces only percent of votes cast (from among the eligible voters in a constituency), not the number of votes cast – violating the Representation of the People Act, which requires numbers of votes cast to be made public; accordingly, if the number of eligible voters is also made known, anyone can estimate the percentage. ECI is then free to announce, before the day of counting of the votes, a much higher percentage of votes cast – which are bogus votes. A study by the Vote for Democracy after the Lok Sabha elections 2024, concluded that 79 seats were won by the now ruling party, largely, on the basis of this method. It happened in the Lok Sabha elections to the extent of 55 million votes – that turned the election in constituencies that were marginal (i.e. where the margin of victory in the last election was small). Another study by the Association of Democratic Rights came to a similar conclusion about the total number of votes first announced by ECI, and then later enhanced before counting day. That essentially implies that voter names loaded onto EVM are of voters that did not vote and after polls closed – with ECI officers in collusion. This is what Congress's Rahul Gandhi has alleged for Maharashtra, that there were 6.5 million new voters added between 5.30 pm and 7.30 pm. There are stunning increases (7 to 12%) between the figures of votes polled and made available immediately after polls and before counting in the 2024 Lok Sabha. The same meticulous game appear to have been played in the elections to the state assemblies of Haryana and Maharashtra in 2024, where there was little likelihood of the sitting government being re-elected back to power – so great was the anti-incumbency. In addition, the ECI has played yet another game. At the end of polling on election day the ECI is required to provide 17-C forms – which can enable a candidate (or anyone) to verify the actual votes polled. This is to be provided to all candidates and their agents and also made public, but the ECI has not done so of late, except in a minority of cases. Is the EVM reliable? The EVM-centred electoral system has four critical components – microchips to record the votes as cast by the voter, VVPATs to audit and verify that the votes are counted as recorded, the voters' list and Symbol Loading Units (SLUs) that upload the name and symbol of the candidates contesting on a particular seat on VVPAT or paper trail machines roughly 10-15 days before. This change came in 2017. The fact that post 2017, the EVS (electronic voting system) is no more stand-alone but linked to the internet with the SLU having a labile memory has made the system susceptible to manipulation. The integrity of the microchips in the SLU is suspect because very few from the ECI, government and directors on the board of public sector undertakings BEL and ECIL (with known links with the ruling party) know about their design and source. The EVM contains multiple labile (i.e. writable) memories that records each vote as it is cast. 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Santosh Mehrotra was professor of Economics at JNU. Jagdeep Chhokhar was an IIM professor and is the founder of the Association of Democratic Rights. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments. Politics 'Prove it': Rahul Gandhi Doubles Down on Rigging Allegations After ECI's Unsigned Rebuttal View More
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