Senior Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) leader and former Bihar Minister Nitish Mishra has questioned the politics being played in the name of caste census. He said doubts being raised by political parties regarding delay in release of report’s findings are purely inspired by politics.
“This report cannot be published right away because many discrepancies came to fore while carrying out the survey and the Central Government had instructed the State Government to remove them. When socio-economic data was made available to the public and were given an opportunity to file claims and objections, the Government received 97,46,785 applications and 44,66,733 data were modified. Many States including Bihar have not made the corrections yet,” said Mishra who was Rural Development Minister.
Social-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) — 2011 was carried out by State Rural Development Departments on instructions of Central Rural Development Ministry. Mishra said since he was the Minister for Rural Development Department at the time of commencement of census, he fully understands the nitty gritties of the survey. Those who are questioning the delay in release of census should be aware that the purpose of the survey was to give realistic rankings to families based on their social and economic status, he said and added this would help in identifying families below poverty line which in turn would ensure that beneficiaries of Government schemes are the ones who really need them.
“Parties like RJD and JD(U) are asking why SECC report has not been made public yet. We want to ask the Congress and RJD-supported JD(U) Government, has it followed the Central Government’s instructions and rectified the mistakes in censusIJ Has it collated the rectified data and uploaded itIJ In between 2011-2014 no suggestions regarding caste census were put forward by the RJD or any other leader including lalu Prasad. Neither any specific questions were asked in the Vidhan Sabha regarding caste census,” Mishra pointed out.
He said that the Rural Development Ministry had duly informed all the States regarding it through a letter last year. “There are glaring anomalies in SECC. At many places caste is mentioned as OBC, BC, general or open. In some places surnames like Sharma, Singh and Verma are mentioned instead of caste and yet others have listed their caste as Bihari, Bengali, Gujarati, Madrasi etc. Almost 1.5 lakh corrections are pending in Bihar’s caste data alone. These corrections will take time,” he stated.