Hyderabad: Telangana’s Congress government has owned as its success the announcement by the BJP-led Union government that it will take up a caste census as part of the decadal national census.Chief minister Revanth Reddy thanked Lok Sabha leader of opposition and party leader Rahul Gandhi for mooting the idea of a caste census at a media conference as the Congress cadre celebrated the announcement at the party office here.Reddy credited the Congress as the torchbearer of the proposed nation-wide caste census on the grounds that the party had already conducted a caste survey in Telangana six months ago with ‘fine results’.The survey pegged the backward classes (BCs)’ share of the state population at 56.33%, that of the Scheduled Castes at 17.43%, of Scheduled Tribes at 10.45% and other castes at 15.79%.On the basis of the survey’s findings, the government enacted two legislations hiking reservations for backward classes in education, employment and local bodies to 42%, which the Congress had promised to do before assembly elections in November 2023.The legislations were referred by governor Jishnu Dev Varma to the Union government as the overall quota for reserved categories crossed the 50% cap set by the Supreme Court.The state government also requested the Union government to place the new reservation laws (enacting a 42% quota for BCs, 15% for SCs and 6% for STs, making it 63% overall) in the ninth schedule of the constitution to shield them from judicial review.Reddy recalled that Gandhi conceived of the idea of a caste survey during his Bharat Jodo Yatra.A few months after assuming power, the Congress government in Telangana turned Gandhi’s goal into reality by adopting a resolution in the assembly committing to launch the survey, he said.After the resolution was sent to the Union government by the governor, the party organised a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi urging the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to “fall in line” lest “the regime … be wiped out in the next elections”.“Except NDA partners, all parties supported the dharna,” Reddy said. “It was precisely the pressure mounted by the Congress that resulted in the NDA making the announcement.”A large delegation of Telangana Congress leaders call on governor Jishnu Dev Verma to thank him for giving his assent to the legislation enhancing reservations for BCs to 42%. Photo by arrangement.He suggested to the Union government that it constitute a group of ministers and an expert committee to study how best the caste census could be carried out at the national level. The state government was willing to share its ‘rich experience’ with its counterpart in New Delhi, he said.The chief minister insisted that the states required different profiles for the inclusion and exclusion of communities from the lists of reserved categories. For instance, the Boya community is classified as a BC in Telangana but as an ST in Karnataka. Similarly, the Lambada group is listed among STs in Telangana but considered a BC in Maharashtra.The group of ministers and the experts’ panel will get a chance to study such discrepancies when they get down to the job, he said.Reddy lauded the survey in Telangana as a role model for the country as it was an elaborate effort by over 1.5 lakh personnel with the aid of an eight-page questionnaire soliciting answers to 57 questions.The survey covered 96.9% of the state’s 3.70 crore people, while 16 lakh people (3.1%) opted out. The state was divided into 95,000 units, with one enumerator in-charge of a unit covering 150 houses.He said his government’s machinery will extend full support to Union government teams if they collaborate with their state counterparts.Invoking Gandhi, he said the survey was an x-ray scan of society that will help diagnose social and economic evils. Gandhi had heard the pain of the people and expressed a desire that the Congress take up the survey nationally and in the states after coming to power, he added.“We did a transparent and secure job implementing the Data Privacy Act for responses to the questionnaire. There was neither legal litigation nor political interference. The questionnaire was not prepared by bureaucrats sitting in the secretariat but based on feedback from the public,” he continued.The survey’s results were debated extensively in the assembly.Also read | Telangana Caste Survey: What Did It Find and What Have Its Critics Said?Answering questions, Reddy said the state government would have lost the moral authority to claim success for the Union government’s announcement if the BJP had carried out a caste survey in any one of the 15-odd states where it is in power. It did not do so even in Gujarat, where it has ruled for 25 years, he said.He expressed his sympathies with BJP leaders who were sore that Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed the path of the Congress. But, he said, he was willing to climb down a step and give the BJP a heads-up to assuage their feelings. He also said one year was a reasonable period to complete the task given all the challenges.The BJP rubbished Reddy’s claim that Telangana was a role model for the caste census and said the latter as well as Gandhi were shedding crocodile tears.The national president of the saffron party’s other backward classes morcha, K. Laxman, asked why the Congress failed to conduct a caste census during its various stints in power since 1947.Laxman, a Rajya Sabha MP, said that B.R. Ambedkar had suggested a national commission for backward classes to study constitutional rights for this section. When then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru set up the commission headed by Kaka Kalelkar, its report was ignored.Nehru was against reservations on the basis of caste as beneficiaries would be reduced to second-rate citizens, Laxman said.He questioned the authenticity of the survey in Telangana, seeking to know the reasons for the drop in the share of Muslims BCs’ population from 12% to 10%. He claimed the BJP had decided to have a caste census as part of the decadal census a long time ago, adding that Rajnath Singh as Union home minister had committed to this in 2018.Former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) minister V. Srinivas Goud questioned Reddy’s role model claim. He recalled that the BRS government in Telangana had passed a resolution in the assembly in favour of a caste survey in 2021. He said the Congress government’s caste survey was flawed as it undercounted the population of BCs.Hyderabad MP and president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen Asaduddin Owaisi gave Reddy credit for the Union government’s decision to include caste data in the upcoming census.In a post on X, he said the BJP-led Union government must be honest and transparent in collecting and disclosing caste census data. He also said it was for the BJP to be intellectually honest as the party had opposed Scheduled Caste status for Dalit Muslims and reservations for BC Muslims.Rajya Sabha MP and president of the National BC Welfare Association R. Krishnaiah hailed the Union government’s decision and announced that he would withdraw his petition filed in the Supreme Court demanding that the government conduct a caste census.A former chairman of the Telangana Backward Classes Commission, V. Krishnamohan Rao, referred to the failure of Karnataka government to make its survey findings public due to hurdles set up by Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities as they were aggrieved that their population was downsized.The implementation of a reservation system in Bihar after an extensive survey was stayed by the Patna high court on grounds of procedural lapses. Such lapses should be avoided, he said.