SONIPAT: The Congress on Monday held a protest in Sonipat demanding a caste census and rights for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).As part of the party’s 100-day ‘OBC Haq Hunkar Abhiyan’, a large number of Congress workers gathered at the Mini Secretariat and raised slogans against the policies of the central government.After the protest, Congress leaders submitted a memorandum addressed to the President through the district administration.According to local reports, Sonipat MP Satpal Brahmachari, MLA and Haryana Pradesh Congress OBC Department chairman Chandra Prakash, urban district Congress president Kamal Diwan and rural district president Sanjeev Dahiya, among other leaders and workers, participated in the demonstration.Addressing the protesters, Sonipat Congress MP Satpal Brahmachari said there should be a separate column for OBCs in the upcoming census.Linking the demand for a caste census with social justice, he questioned how schemes for backward communities could be formulated without accurate data on their population.Congress leaders said the party had been raising the demand for a caste census for a long time. They said a clearly defined OBC category in the census would help establish accurate data on the population of backward communities.Haryana Pradesh Congress OBC Department chairman and MLA Chandra Prakash said the Congress was demanding that the caste census be conducted transparently.According to him, the party wants the census to include a separate OBC category, a specific code for each caste, a standardised state-wise caste master list and a clear system for recording the data.He said the objective of the campaign was to highlight issues related to social justice and the representation of backward communities. According to the Congress, accurate data is necessary for better planning of targeted welfare schemes.Urban district Congress president Kamal Diwan, while addressing the protest, targeted the BJP government over issues concerning the backward classes.He alleged that the BJP had made several promises to the backward classes during elections but had taken a different approach to their rights after coming to power.Diwan said the Congress would continue to raise the issue “from the streets to Parliament” and would fight to highlight the rights and demands of the backward classes.The protest was attended by office-bearers of the Congress’s urban and rural units, along with former legislators and other local leaders. The protesters marched to the Mini Secretariat and submitted a memorandum.According to local reports, the memorandum sought a caste census and clear inclusion of OBC-related data in the exercise.The Congress has described the Sonipat protest as part of its 100-day ‘OBC Haq Hunkar Abhiyan’.The party said that under the campaign, protests, demonstrations and memorandum submissions would be organised in different districts to raise the issues of caste census and the rights of the backward classes.
