In a major jolt to the Congress, senior party leader Anand Sharma has objected to a caste-based census, saying the issue is “disrespecting the legacy of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi”.

Sharma, who is a member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), expressed his displeasure in a letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge dated March 19.

Party leader Rahul Gandhi has made caste census a major political plank in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and promised that, if elected, the INDIA alliance government will conduct this exercise across the country.

Sharma said a caste census cannot be a panacea nor a solution for unemployment and prevailing inequalities.

In a three-page letter, he said though caste is a reality of Indian society, the Congress has never engaged in nor endorsed identity politics. “That is detrimental to democracy in a society with a rich diversity or region, religion, caste, and ethnicity,” he said.

The veteran leader also recalled Indira Gandhi’s clarion call of 1980 “Na jaat par na paat par, Mohar lagegi Haath par”. After the Mandal riots, he said, Rajiv Gandhi, as a Leader of the Opposition, in his historic speech in Lok Sabha on September 6, 1990, said, “We have problems if caste is defined to enshrine casteism in our country…We have problems if casteism is going to be made a factor for parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies…The Congress cannot stand by and watch this nation being divided.”

Recalling the “inclusive” and “all-encompassing approach” of the Congress party, Sharma said the party’s current stand will come as an indictment of previous Congress governments.

Sharma, who served as Minister of Commerce and Industry from 2009 to 2014, said the departure from the party’s historic position is a matter of concern for many Congressmen and women across the country. “It calls for reflection,” he said.

“After Independence, a conscious policy decision was made by the Government not to canvas caste-related questions in the census, except for SCs and STs, which is collected by the States,” he said, adding that all census commissioners, after independence, have recorded their reasons and disapproval of a national caste census.

The CWC leader also hinted at lack of coordination in the party.

Sharma’s letter has put the party in an uncomfortable position as it has been striving to make caste census a rallying point ahead of the general election.

The ruling BJP had termed Rahul’s “jitni abadi, utna haq’’ poll pitch “backward” and “regressive”, and now with discordant voices within the party, its campaign may hit a rough patch.

Sharma is also one of the G-23 leaders who wrote a scathing letter to the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2021 and called for sweeping changes in the party’s structure and functioning.