Bhubaneswar: After Bihar released its caste census report, opposition parties in Odisha are demanding that the Naveen Patnaik government publish the outcome of the OBC survey conducted in the state this year.
Demand for conducting a caste census also gained momentum in the state. Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Sarat Pattanayak also urged the state government to conduct a caste survey. He said if the BJD government fails to do so, Congress will undertake the exercise if it comes to power in the state next year.
the Odisha government should conduct a caste survey like in Bihar and publish the report, said the PCC chief.
Notably, the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (OSCBC) has already conducted the OBC survey between May and June this year and submitted its report to the state government.
The state government had appointed Justice Raghunath Biswal as the chairman of the commission. The census was conducted among 120 castes falling under the OBC category in the state. The survey was conducted to ascertain the financial, social, and educational status of the OBC communities.
Congress Legislature Party leader Narasingha Mishra alleged that the state government had not provided staff to assist the OBC commission. “Even today, they are not assisting the commission. The BJD is completely anti-OBC. The report should be made public immediately,” he alleged.
Similarly, BJP MLA Nauri Nayak alleged that the OBC survey was not done properly which “indicated that the government lacks commitment towards OBCs”. The BJP legislator demanded early release of the OBC survey report.
However, the BJD vice-president and MLA Debiprasad Mishra dismissed the opposition’s allegations and asserted that had the government been “anti-OBC”, it would not have constituted a commission in the first place.
Mishra said that though the OBC commission has prepared the survey report, some other castes are also demanding inclusion into the OBC list. The government is seriously considering everything before making the final report public, he said.
Meanwhile, Mitali Chinara, a member of the commission, was quoted by HT as saying that the panel which completed its door-to-door survey in July this year found 10.95 million or 46% people belonging to the 208 backward classes.
While strongly pleading for a caste survey in the state, the PCC chief said if the BJD government fails to do it, Congress will undertake the exercise after coming to power in 2024.
In a statement, Pattanayak demanded that the state government convene a one-day special session of the assembly and pass a resolution for conducting the caste survey.
“The Bihar government’s caste survey reveals that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute more than 63 per cent of that state’s population. But in Odisha, we don’t have a clear picture of the number of OBCs and EBCs. As a result, they are not getting their due share in jobs and reservations in educational institutions. This is a denial of social justice to them,” the Congress leader added.
Senior leader and former Union Minister Srikant Jena also strongly demanded immediate steps to conduct caste census in the state.
