Lucknow, February 26: In the budget session of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, MLAs of the Samajwadi Party (SP) created a ruckus on the demand of caste-wise census on Wednesday which led to the adjournment of the house for 40 minutes.
As soon as the assembly proceedings started at 11 am today, opposition leader Ram Govind Chaudhary demanded that the Speaker, Hriday Narayan Dixit should allow discussion related to caste-wise census under Rule 311.
On this, the Speaker said that the subject of census is outside the boundary of the assembly. He said that according to the constitution, the census of the country is the subject of the central list. It does not figure in the state list. In such a situation, it cannot be discussed in any assembly.
On saying this, the SP members started creating a ruckus in the House and came to Vail. The Speaker then adjourned the house for half an hour. He later extended this moratorium for ten minutes.
Leader of the opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was continuously talking about caste-wise census before the elections, but now that the census is going to be done in the year 2021, it is avoiding the caste-wise census. He said that this shows the double character of the BJP.
Chaudhary said that in the past between 1865 and 1872, caste-wise census was done in all the states of the country. After this, caste-wise census was also done in the years 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931 and 1941. He said that even in the year 1951, the then Home Minister Sardar Ballabhbhai Patel had given consent to the ethnic census but after his death in 1950, the Congress government removed the caste column from the census form.
βIn the year 1981, the caste column was added to the census form but it was removed again. After this, caste-wise census was conducted in 2011 on the demand of the public and socialists, but the Congress and BJP governments did not make the caste figures public,β added Chaudhary.
Chaudhary said that there is a conspiracy to keep the poor, the exploited and backward classes in the dark by not doing caste-wise census. He said that due to this, there is dissatisfaction and resentment among the majority of the society.
