Congress questions PM Modi on caste and reservation ahead of Bihar visit

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the ancestral village of former Bihar chief minister and social justice leader Karpoori Thakur, the Congress on Friday posed three direct questions to him over his party’s past actions and current policies on caste and reservation.

Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X, said, “Today the Prime Minister is going to the ancestral village of Jannayak Karpoori Thakur ji. Here are our three straight questions to him.”

Ramesh asked whether it was not an “acknowledged fact” that the Jan Sangh, from which the BJP later emerged, had brought down Karpoori Thakur’s government in Bihar in April 1979 after he introduced reservations for Other Backward Classes. He said Thakur was subjected to the “vilest abuse” by RSS and Jan Sangh leaders at the time.

He further questioned whether it was not true that on April 28, 2024, the Prime Minister had called those demanding a caste census “urban Naxals”, and that his government had categorically rejected the idea both in Parliament on July 20, 2021, and before the Supreme Court on September 21, 2021.

Ramesh also asked whether the Prime Minister and the state government had done anything to protect Bihar’s 65 per cent reservation law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and Extremely Backward Classes under the Constitution.

He said the Congress government had provided such protection to a similar law in Tamil Nadu in September 1994.

PM Modi would kick off his campaign for Bihar polls by paying tributes to late CM Karpoori Thakur at his native village Karpoori Gram in Samastipur district on Friday. After paying tributes to the late leader, he would address his first public meeting in Samastipur and then address another meeting at Begusarai the same day.