Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) has raised allegations that the Narendra Modi government has been reticent in conducting a caste census, fearing that it would unveil the veracity of Prime Minister Modi’s OBC status. Addressing a press briefing at the JD(U) headquarters, the party’s MLC and chief spokesperson, Neeraj Kumar, expressed skepticism regarding Modi’s assertion that he belonged to an “ati pichhda” (extremely backward classes) community.
Kumar emphasized that Modi had faced accusations of including his caste, ‘Modh Ghanchi,’ in the OBC list back in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The JD(U) leader pointed out that Modi attempted to refute these allegations by claiming it was carried out in 1994 during the Congress rule in Gujarat and at the national level.
Kumar presented a document he asserted was the Gazette of India from that year, which mentioned the castes included in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. He challenged the BJP to rebut his claims, pointing out that only one subgroup of the Ghanchi caste, specifically Ghanchi (Muslim), was listed among OBCs in 1994.
Furthermore, Kumar alleged that Modi’s motivation for including the ‘Modh Ghanchis’ in the OBC category was primarily for electoral benefits. He argued that, based on the 1931 Census, the Prime Minister’s caste exhibited literacy rates equivalent to Brahmins and higher than Rajputs, implying that he did not require the privileges afforded to OBCs.
Kumar also referred to historical documents suggesting that the Modh Ghanchis had been requesting classification among Baniyas, not Ghanchis, in the early 19th century. He underlined the significance of the caste survey conducted by the Nitish Kumar government and contended that the central government hesitated to conduct a caste census due to the fear of exposing the alleged inaccuracies adopted in Gujarat.
In a public address in Uttar Pradesh in 2019, Prime Minister Modi had declared himself as not just an OBC but born into the “most-backward caste.”
