Congress’s Jairam Ramesh welcomes the Supreme Court judgment for quota for EWS stating the process initiated by Manmohan Singh.
Shri Jairam Ramesh Statement
The Indian National Congress welcomes today’s Supreme Court judgment upholding the 103rd Constitutional Amendment that provides for the 10% reservation quota for Economically Weaker Sections belonging to castes other than Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and OBCs.
The Amendment itself was the result of a process initiated by Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government in 2005-06 with the appointment of the Sinho Commission that submitted its report in July 2010.
Thereafter, widespread consultations were held and the Bill was ready by 2014. It took Modi Sarkar five years to get the Bill enacted. It also bears mention here that the Socio-Economic and Caste Census was completed in 2012 when I myself was the Union Rural Development Minister. The Modi Sarkar has yet to clarify its position on an updated Caste Census, something that the Congress party supports and demands.”
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census was completed in 2012
The Amendment was the result of a process initiated by Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government in 2005-2006 with the appointment of the Sinho Commission which submitted its report in July 2010.
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census was completed in 2012 when Shri Jairam Ramesh was the Union Rural Development Minister, which is why Jairam Ramesh questions the Modi government as to why it took them five years to get the Bill enacted.
History Behind the Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC) was conducted for the 2011 Census of India. The Manmohan Singh government of the Congress approved the Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 to be carried out after discussion in both houses of Parliament in 2010.
SECC-2011 was not done under the 1948 Census of India Act and the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India were not entrusted to do the same. The SECC 2011 was conducted in all states and union territories of India and the first findings were revealed on 3 July 2015 by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
SECC 2011 is also the first paperless census in India conducted on hand-held electronic devices by the government in 640 districts.
The rural development ministry has taken a decision to use the SECC data in all its programmes such as MGNREGA, National Food Security Act, and the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana.
SECC 2011 was the first caste-based census since the 1931 Census of India, and it was launched on 29 June 2011 from the Sankhola village of Hazemara block in the West Tripura district.
Conflicts
Both major political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party had differences within the party over the caste-based census. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj supported the idea of a caste-based census, while then Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram was against it citing practical difficulties in counting caste while conducting the census.
SECC 2011 also counted other aspects like Manual scavenging and Transgender count in India.
SECC 2011 was not conducted under the 1948 Census of India Act, which in turn made information disclosure voluntary for citizens, and not a mandatory disclosure.
Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 was the fourth exercise conducted by the Government of India to identify households living below the poverty line (BPL) in India that would get various entitlements, after three censuses in 1992, 1997, and 2002.
The last BPL census was conducted in India in 2002 and the procedure adopted was to collect information on 13 indicators for every rural household and assign a mark for each of these. The first caste census was achieved in India in 1881.
In January 2017, Central Government accepted recommendations to use Socio-Economic Caste Census, instead of the poverty line, as the main instrument for the identification of beneficiaries and transfer of funds for social schemes in rural areas.