PM Modi in Bihar: CM Nitish Kumar praises PM for caste census; asks Bihar voters to express gratitude | India News

PM Modi with CM Nitish Kumar at Siwan rally (ANI picture)

NEW DELHI: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday requested folks of his poll-bound state to express gratitude in the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who determined to maintain a caste census together with inhabitants census in 2027.Addressing a rally in Siwan, which PM Modi additionally attended, Nitish Kumar mentioned: “Ordering a caste census is a great thing that the Centre has done. I thank the Prime Minister for the same,” mentioned Kumar, and addressing the folks, “you all may please express your gratitude towards him”.

A caste census entails systematically recording people’ caste identities throughout a nationwide census. In India, the place caste influences social, financial, and political life, such information can provide priceless insights into the distribution and socio-economic standing of varied caste teams.Caste enumeration was a daily function of census workouts throughout British rule from 1881 to 1931. However, with the primary census of unbiased India in 1951, the federal government selected to discontinue the observe, besides for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).Interestingly, below the Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan authorities, which included Lalu Yadav’s RJD and the Congress occasion, a caste census was performed in Bihar between 2022 and 2023 to acquire detailed information on the state’s caste composition.Later, in the second half of 2023, the Bihar authorities launched its statistical information on the caste-based headcount. The information confirmed that the politically delicate 113-caste group generally known as the extraordinarily backward lessons (EBCs) represent the most important portion at 36 per cent, together with the opposite backward lessons at 27 per cent, which quantities to 63 per cent of the overall 13.07 crore inhabitants of the state; collectively they represent the social hefty phase of backward lessons. Muslims represent 17.7 per cent of the state’s inhabitants, together with EBC and “upper caste” Muslims. After the figures have been out, CM Nitish Kumar and his then deputy Tejashwi Yadav, determined to name it a “caste-based headcount”, and never a “caste census”, to escape a authorized tangle as Union junior house minister Nityanand Rai had informed Lok Sabha in 2021 that it could not be legally tenable to maintain a “caste census” because the regulation gives for solely rely of SC/ST teams.

The caste-wise breakup exhibits that the “upper caste” teams amongst Hindus, thought-about BJP’s mainstay, account for solely 10.6 per cent, Brahmins 3.7 per cent, Rajputs (Thakurs) 3.4 per cent, Bhumihars 2.9 per cent and Kayasthas 0.6 per cent.The Bihar caste rely appeared to have just a little deviation in the caste-wise inhabitants of 2023 Bihar in contrast to the 1901 figures for the erstwhile mixed area of Bihar and Jharkhand. Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha have been carved out of Greater Bengal in 1912. As Stephen Henningham notes in his guide Peasant Movements in Colonial India: North Bihar in 1901, the “higher” or higher castes in Bihar then accounted for 15.6 per cent of the inhabitants, center castes reminiscent of Koeri, Kurmi, and Yadav made up 19.8 per cent, Muslims constituted 16.1 per cent, and decrease center castes together with Scheduled Castes fashioned 47.9 per cent. The whole Hindu inhabitants in 1901 stood at 83.3 per cent, in contrast to 82 per cent in present-day Bihar as revealed by the 2023 caste survey.