PM Narendra Modi with women MPs after the Women's Reservation Bill was passed in the Parliament in September 2023. File photo: PTI
Opposition suspects 'hidden agenda' as Centre delinks women's reservation from 2027 census
By bypassing 2027 Census data in favor of 2011 figures, Opposition claims Centre is "freezing" caste census to deny OBCs power and manipulate 2029 electoral map
If the Centre’s plan for an early rollout of women’s reservation has upset the Opposition’s applecart, the proposal to delink operationalising the Naari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam with the 2027 Census has created both a challenge and an opportunity for the ruling party’s rivals.
On Sunday (April 12), Jairam Ramesh, the Congress party’s communications in-charge, alleged in a post on X that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government “wants to put the caste census in cold storage”.
The government, Ramesh claimed, wants to amend Article 334A (introduced by the 106th Constitution amendment to reserve one-third seats in Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women) “saying that the caste census results will not be available for a few years - overlooking the fact that both Bihar and Telangana completed the comprehensive caste survey in less than six months (sic).”
Women's reservation and Census
The foundation for Ramesh’s claim, though tangential, was simple. Article 334A mandates implementing women’s reservation through a delimitation exercise conducted “after the relevant figures for the first census are taken after" the September 2023 Naari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam enactment are published. In April 2025, after vociferously deriding the Opposition’s caste enumeration demand for years, a volte face by the Centre allowed the enumeration of caste (a practice discontinued after the colonial era 1931 Census) during the 2027 Census, which is underway.
Now, the Centre wishes to delink the women’s reservation rollout from the 2027 Census on the grounds that not doing so would delay operationalising the 2023 Act well beyond the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.
This is where Ramesh’s claim of a “hidden agenda… not to have the caste census” emerges, pointing to a potential new flashpoint between the Centre and Opposition with uncertain electoral implications.
For the Opposition, particularly parties like the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and the DMK, the link between the 2027 Census and the 2023 Act is crucial. When the women’s reservation Bill was passed in September 2023, these parties opposed the clause tying implementation to a fresh Census and delimitation. With the Census itself delayed since 2021, the timeline for rollout appeared indefinite; something the Opposition repeatedly called out.
The Opposition’s argument then was two-pronged. First, it asserted that there was no constitutional requirement for delimitation preceding the women’s reservation rollout and that the quota should be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls itself. Second, that the government must include a ‘quota within quota’ for women from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) alongside the vertical reservation already provided for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The government rejected both arguments. It maintained that any new reservation must follow delimitation after a fresh Census. It also argued that, in the absence of caste enumeration since 1931, there was no reliable data to support OBC reservation in legislatures.
Caste enumeration
On April 30 last year, the Centre finally agreed to have castes enumerated during the 2027 Census. The U-turn was attributed by the government’s critics partly to the electoral setbacks that the BJP faced across Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha polls a year earlier, when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav made caste census a centrepiece of their poll campaign and partly to the government’s desperation to deflect public attention from the killing of 26 civilians by Pakistani terrorists in the Baisaran meadows of Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22.
With the Centre agreeing for caste enumeration, parties such as the Congress, SP and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD felt emboldened about pushing further the demand for a ‘OBC quota within quota’ in the women’s reservation, especially since the 2023 Act tied implementation to the 2027 Census data, which would include the caste count.
With the Centre now doing another somersault to undermine the very arguments it had offered 30 months ago and justifying decoupling reservation from the 2027 Census, the Opposition is predictably suspicious.
Centre's U-turn
Importantly, all through the past month while the Centre has, in its interactions with Opposition leaders, including in letters exchanged between Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, stressed on the need to expedite the reservation rollout but refused to answer questions about the scope and scale of delimitation it wishes to propose. The Centre has also evaded answering why it wants to push these amendments during the extended Parliament session scheduled from April 16 to April 18, when the entire leadership of key Opposition parties like the Trinamool Congress, the DMK and the Congress is caught up in extremely consequential electoral battles in Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
The Opposition was open to discussing the Centre's proposal after April 29, when polling for the Bengal elections concludes, and had already assured the government of its full support "to any equitable and just means that will ensure an early implementation of women's reservation," insists Congress MP and the party's whip in Lok Sabha, Mohammed Jawed. Why the government remains unwilling to wait a fortnight, per the Opposition's request, to bring these amendments to Parliament when it had allowed 30 months to pass since the Adhiniyam's enactment in September 2023 is, thus, just as perplexing as the Centre's bid to now ignore the population-cum-caste Census data of 2027 and, instead, base the proposed delimitation exercise on the 2011 Census data.
Also read: ‘Delimitation by stealth’: Opposition sees Centre’s ploy in early women reservation rollout
Agreeing with Ramesh’s claim that the Centre wants to put the caste census “in cold storage”, RJD MP Abhay Kushwaha told The Federal, “the BJP’s anti-OBC face stands exposed once again... this is a party that has reduced Dalits, tribals and OBCs to tokens; they may appoint people from these communities to high positions to gain electoral mileage but when it comes to giving them real representation and share in power, they will do everything to stop it.”
“They were always opposed to caste census and when the women’s reservation law was passed, BJP opposed our demand for introducing OBC quota for women saying there is no caste census. Everybody knows that Modi agreed to caste census under Opposition’s pressure but after 30 months of saying women reservation will be done based on 2027 Census data, they are now saying they will do it on 2011 data. The only reason can be to suppress caste data and deny OBCs their share,” Kushwaha added.
Opposition hits out
For the Opposition, the Centre’s reported plan to use 2011 Census data as the basis for a fresh delimitation exercise to increase the strength of Lok Sabha and state assemblies by 50 per cent and rollout women reservation will “create circumstances for another mass agitation for caste census and for introducing OBC quota within women reservation," said Anil Jaihind, chairman of the Congress party’s OBC department.
“I am sure our party leadership will talk to our allies in the INDIA bloc and draw out a nationwide strategy. Congress president (Mallikarjun Kharge) is going to meet INDIA bloc leaders on April 15 (a day before Parliament reconvenes to discuss the proposed amendments to the women’s reservation law) and he will surely discuss this issue. Our leader Rahul Gandhi led the battle for caste census, our parliamentary party leader and inspiration Sonia Gandhi demanded ‘quota within quota’ for OBC women when Naari Shakti Adhiniyam was passed. It is our commitment and we are willing to fight for it to any extent,” Jaihind added.
Opposition leaders from the Congress, SP and RJD believe that any attempt by the Centre to “derail or delay” the caste census, would help the INDIA bloc strengthen its social outreach among the backward castes, which constitute over half the country’s population per unofficial estimates but are electorally fragmented between political outfits from both the Opposition and ruling coalitions.
“If the agenda behind the Centre proposing to use 2011 Census data for women reservation really is to somehow derail or delay the caste census, we will fight back. The PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) samaj taught the BJP a lesson in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and will do so again when UP goes to polls next year and in 2029, it will throw Modi out of power. Akhilesh Yadav (the Samajwadi Party chief) and all his soldiers will not let this injustice be done to the OBC community and especially its women,” said the SP’s Lok Sabha MP from Fatehpur, Naresh Chandra Uttam Patel.
Hidden agendas
Despite such assertiveness, there is also anxiety within Opposition ranks. A senior SP leader claimed that though the Centre may not scrap caste census as Ramesh fears, it could “delay publishing its findings” until after the 2029 elections while using the data internally for political strategy.
“The UPA had also got sanction for a caste census (socio-economic and caste census or SECC) in 2013 but by the time the caste-related data was finalised it was 2015 and the BJP had come to power; that data was never published. I am 100 per cent sure that in the past 10 years, a big part of the BJP’s politics has been shaped by the data that was collected by the UPA’s caste census. All the laabharthi (beneficiary) schemes that the Modi government came up with to target SC, ST and OBC communities and the way the BJP changed its candidate selection process in states like UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh to represent those Dalit, tribal and backward sub-groups who were not getting proper representation in the past despite big populations; I am sure all of that was done using that UPA caste census data and now they will do the same in 2029 using the updated data collected in 2027 Census,” the SP leader alleged.
A senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh, who also served as a minister in the UPA government, said if Ramesh’s fears of about the Centre’s plan to delay publication of the caste census in time came true, “the Opposition will have a herculean task fighting the BJP not just in the next Lok Sabha election but in the foreseeable future”.
“You see, if they are allowed to get away with this like they do with all their other tricks for destroying democracy, then what chance does the Opposition really have...? We are all seeing how the entire electoral system has been compromised. You go to Bengal and see what they (BJP) are doing with the help of the Election Commission; this whole SIR business... the same manipulation will happen with delimitation of constituencies by carving out seats that suit the BJP. All of this combined with access to the latest detailed caste data, will give the BJP a decisive advantage… if they publish it after the 2029 polls, it will have no meaning,” the Congress veteran asserted.
If indeed Ramesh’s warning comes true, the Opposition may have grounds to mount a public campaign targeting the OBCs, Dalits and tribals reminiscent of the ‘Save Constitution’ pitch that helped the INDIA bloc make considerable gains in the last Lok Sabha polls. But, will it outweigh the challenges that the BJP’s possible withholding of vital caste census data would pose to the Opposition at the hustings?
The implications of the amendments that the Centre proposes to make to the Naari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam later this week aren’t merely about women representation in Lok Sabha or state legislatures. They run much deeper and are likely to be way more consequential than they currently appear.
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