‘Census delayed as govt. wants to end quota’
When The Hindu pointed out that the delay was on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Ramesh said,“In 2021, many countries of the world carried out census during COVID. How was India alone an exception to this? Why was it not carried out in 2022, in 2023, or being done in 2024?”
The Congress’s charge came on a day when party president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and charged his advisors of misleading him about “things that are not written in our manifesto”.
“I would be more than happy to meet you in person to explain our Nyay Patra so that as the Prime Minister you don’t make statements that are false,” Mr. Kharge said in his letter.
“You and your government have repeatedly turned away from the atrocities that the poor and backward women are facing in the country. Today, you talk about their mangalsutra. Isn’t your government responsible for the atrocities against women in Manipur, atrocities against Dalit girls, garlanding of rapists?” asked the Congress chief, in a stinging rebuttal to Mr. Modi’s charge that the Congress would take away wealth, including mangalsutras, from Hindu women and redistribute it among Muslims.
Mr. Ramesh also accused Mr. Modi of spreading “lies” to divert attention from real issues in the ongoing Lok Sabha election. He dared the Prime Minister to point out where in the party’s manifesto the phrase “redistribution of wealth” had been mentioned.
Rejecting Mr. Modi’s allegation that the Congress would charge inheritance tax from people if it came to power, he said, “Prime Minister symbolises asatyamev jayate.”
Mr. Ramesh also asked the Prime Minister to clear his stand on the issue of conducting a caste census, and questioned why the government has not made public the entire dataset of the 2011 socio-economic caste census (SECC).
Mr. Ramesh claimed that after reading the trends from the rst phase of the Lok Sabha election, Mr. Modi has raised communal issues as he wants the Congress on a di§erent pitch. “The Prime Minister wants us to play on the pitch that has been prepared by Jay Shah and Amit Shah. We will not play on that pitch, we will play on the pitch that has issues of unemployment, in¨ation, increasing economic inequalities,” he said.