Mumbai: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister
and NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal today said Planning Commission
and a Lok Sabha panel had favoured OBC census to ensure that
the other backward classes got benefits of government
policies.
The Planning Commission had made a strong plea for
carrying out a census of OBCs like the one carried out for
SC/STs, minorities and persons with disabilities, he said.
"The panel said that in the absence of exact assessment
of their population size, literacy rate, employment status in
government, private and unorganised sectors, poverty status
and human development, it is very difficult to formulate
realistic policies and programmes for development of OBCs,"
Bhujbal told reporters this evening.
He was speaking at a media interaction organised by the
Press Club, Mumbai.
In 2006-07, the Lok Sabha standing committee chaired by
BJP's Sumitra Mahajan had called for 'pursuing vigorously with
the Registrar General of India the need to conduct survey of
OBCs so that required funds could be made available to state
governments for OBCs, Bhujbal said.
"I have been making this demand (OBC census) since 1992.
It is not that the demand has been raised in the last few
months," he said.
The August 23 rally in Delhi in support of the OBC census
has been put off, he said. "We are not cancelling the rally
but merely putting it off as we await the final decision on
the issue after the GOM's nod for the census," he said.
The rally was planned by Bhujbal-led Akhil Bhartiya
Mahatma Phule Samata Parishad as a show of strength to press
for carrying out OBC census.
Bhujbal thanked JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav, SP chief
Mulayam Singh Yadav, RJD chief Lalu Prasad for their role in
mustering support for caste based census.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, August 18, 2010, 21:27