Hyderabad: BC leaders threaten to boycott Census

Vidyanagar: The president of BC welfare association, R Krishnaiah warned the Central government that BCs would boycott Census which is to be started from April if the caste-wise details were not collected. He was speaking at a meeting of various BC Associations here at BC Bhavan on Thursday.

Later, addressing the media, Krishnaiah expressed his displeasure at the lack of any columns in the Census form for collection of caste-wise details. He recalled that in 2010 the then Central government had collected caste-wise data separately, but the data was not accepted as it was collected unscientifically.

He suggested that collection of caste-wise data through Census would save costs and the data could be utilised for various administrative purposes. He said that most of the government welfare schemes were based on castes and this could be utilised for their effective implementation. He recalled the recent Supreme Court ruling in which it questioned the basis on which a caste was removed from availing of benefits of welfare scheme.

Not even a single caste has been removed from the reservation category even after 72 years of independence due to the lack of necessary data on castes, he said. He said that caste-wise enumeration of Census would be useful for effective implementation of reservations and various welfare schemes.

Among those who attended the meeting were Gujja Krishna, K Janardhan, Rajesh, Venkatesh, Ashok, Narsimha Goud, Mallesh Yadav, B Krishna, Jillapalli Anji and others.