CASTE EQUATION IN CONG LEXICON

Rahul Gandhi seeks to achieve social justice, calls for surveys on wealth distribution for rights proportional to population

- PREETHA NAIR

JITNI Abadi, Utna Haq" (rights proportional to population)... Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's renewed call to expand caste quotas and for surveys on wealth redistribution has again brought the 'social justice politics' back into the electoral landscape.

Though the grand old party had aggressively pushed the twin plank of welfarism and caste census during the latest state polls in the Hindi heartland, it failed to strike a chord with the electorate.

However, recalibrating its strategies for the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress manifesto hinges prominently on the themes of 'social justice and equity'. In the manifesto, the party has promised to conduct a Socio-Economic and Caste Census to enumerate castes and sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions. If the Opposition alliance comes to power, the party also pledged to pass a constitutional amendment to remove the Supreme Court-mandated 50% cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs.

"We will first conduct a nationwide caste census to determine how many people belong to the Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and minorities. After that, we will conduct a financial and institutional survey in a historic step to ascertain the distribution of wealth," said Rahul Gandhi recently.