‘Modi, RSS wall’ blocking path of SCs, STs, OBCs

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS were strengthening the wall obstructing the path of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, even as he acknowledged that the efforts of the UPA government to bring down that wall were not sufficient. Addressing the party’s ‘Samvidhan Rakshak Abhiyaan’ at the Talkatora Stadium here, Gandhi, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said it is his guarantee that “Modi has not read” the Constitution.

“If PM Modi would have read this book then what he does daily, he would not do it,” Gandhi said, displaying a copy of the Constitution of India. Gandhi said the country’s whole system is pitted against Dalits, Adivasis and backward-class people.

He said a wall obstructs the path of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs as he accused Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) -- the ideological mentor of the BJP -- of strengthening that wall by “adding cement to it”. “Slowly the wall (obstructing the path of SCs, STs, OBCs) is getting strengthened.

Earlier, the UPA government gave MGNREGA, the land acquisition act, the right to food...those were ways to weaken that wall. Today, when I look back, I can say the UPA government did not weaken the wall to the extent it should have, it did not do it as strongly as it should have,” Gandhi said.

“However, we used to make efforts to weaken that wall but they (the BJP) are strengthening that wall by adding concrete,” the former Congress president said. Therefore, Gandhi said, a nationwide caste census is important as through it, people would get to know how many people from the SC, ST, and OBC sections are there in the judiciary, media, corporate India, private hospitals, and colleges.

“This X-ray is the first step, we know that Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, poor general caste people, minorities are in pain. So we have to find out where the injury is, where the fracture is, whether there is a compound fracture...we will get data by caste census,” he said. The day this data comes into the hands of a Congress government, that day the whole paradigm of development will change, Gandhi asserted. “

We have begun the work in Telangana and when the results come from there, our policies will be formed on the basis of the data of the caste census. The BJP is afraid of this as it wants only 4-5 per cent of the people to control India. They are trying to destroy the Constitution,” he alleged. There are two ways to break the control -- caste census and removing the 50 per cent reservation cap, he added. “We have done it (caste survey) in Karnataka, Telangana. Wherever our governments come, we will take out the data on Dalits, Adivasis, backward classes, minorities, and poor general caste. We’ll find out what is their share in the development and what should be their share in India’s future,” he said.