Jharkhand Chief Minister gives green signal to caste based survey

Ranchi: Before the Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Champai Soren has approved the caste census in Jharkhand. After the caste census was conducted in Bihar, many parties started demanding the same in Jharkhand also. With this, after Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand will be the third state in the country to conduct caste census.

The CM has directed the Personnel Department to prepare a draft (SOP for conducting the survey) and place it before the Cabinet for approval. A senior official said, if everything goes as per plan, the exercise will start after the Lok Sabha elections.
Hinting at the survey, the CM posted on Twitter, “The bigger the number, the bigger the share. Jharkhand is ready.”
The work of caste census will be done by the Department of Personnel, Administrative Reforms and Official Language.
According to government sources, the problems related to caste census have been resolved.
According to the rules, the work of census is allotted to the Department of Land and Revenue and Land Reforms, but in the executive rules, the work of caste based census has not been allotted to any department. Thus, Champai Soren government finalized the Department of Personnel to conduct the survey.

However, the time frame for conducting the survey is not yet clear. If sources are to be believed, the Personnel Department will not delay much for this. He said that the caste-based census data will be revealed before the assembly elections to be held in November this year.
It is noteworthy that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also advocated caste census during his ‘Nyaya Yatra’ in Jharkhand. Gandhi had promised to conduct a nationwide caste census and remove the 50 per cent cap on reservation if the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party formed the government at the Center after the Lok Sabha elections.

Congress MLA Pradeep Yadav and AJSU MLA Lambodar Mahato had also raised this issue through a calling attention motion in the Assembly, after which the then Parliamentary Affairs Minister Alamgir Alam had assured them on behalf of the government that they were in favor of the caste census.
After the announcement, the Action Taken Report (ATR) was also presented on the assurance of the House.