BJP guards its turf as INDIA says addressing inequality

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that withstood pressure from its allies and opposition parties to agree to a caste-based enumeration, on Monday said, it does not oppose the survey, results of which were released by the Bihar government earlier in the day, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the opposition of dividing the people of the country on the basis of caste.

"They played with the emotions of the poor and divided society on caste lines. They are committing this sin even now," Modi said at a rally in Gwalior. 

"They have only one thing in their mind-hatred against the nation and its policies," he said. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the BJP was not against carrying out the survey.

"Gone are the days when Mandal was with the opposition and the Kamandal with the BJP, today we have both. Had the Congress not sat on the Mandal Commission report, today there would have been a much larger number of OBCs in senior government positions. It was the BJP that supported the report," he said.

The opposition INDIA bloc, meanwhile, welcomed the report, with several leaders calling for a similar exercise to be carried out across the country.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that people should be given rights based on their population.

"The caste census of Bihar has revealed that OBC+SC+ ST are 84% there.... Therefore, it is important to know the caste statistics of India. The greater the population, the greater the rights - this is our pledge," Rahul Gandhi posted on X.  

Caste count outcome will not affect social engineering: BJP

NEW DELHI: The outcome of the caste survey in Bihar will not impact the social engineering model of the Bharatiya Janata Party that seeks to bring different castes under the wider Hindutva umbrella, leaders of the party said on Monday, adding that they were not opposed to a caste-based enumeration.

The percentage of various castes revealed in the survey illustrates that the BJP's outreach towards Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Scheduled Castes and Tribes was well-intended, as it gave these castes representation in line with their numbers, party functionaries said on condition of anonymity.