Buoyed by the overwhelming response to the ‘Save Constitution Conclave’ in Patna, attended by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Bihar unit of the party has decided to undertake its save Constitution campaign to every nook and corner of the state.
The campaign, named ‘Jai Bapu, Jai Bheem, Jai Samvidhan’, will start in the second week of February from Champaran, and will be followed by Sasaram and Buxar. Similar programmes will be organised in other districts as well.
Making an announcement to this effect in Patna on Sunday, state president of the party Akhilesh Prasad Singh said that the Congress will take the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and the Indian Constitution to the people through this campaign. He expressed confidence that this initiative will strengthen the party in Bihar.
Speaking about Rahul Gandhi’s jibe at the caste census held in Bihar during his speech at the ‘Save Constitution Conclave’ in Patna on Saturday, Singh said that Rahul wanted to highlight that the entire exercise was meaningless, as it did not yield the desired result.
“The caste-based census was conducted in Bihar with an objective. But Nitish Kumar has put it on the back burner. That is only because Nitish went back to NDA which is not in favour of caste census,” he said.
He added: “If Nitish was sincere, he would have used the data collected through the caste census to make policies and implement them. A proposal was passed by the state cabinet to provide Rs 2 lakh as financial aid to over 94 lakh poor families identified through the caste census, but he did not act on it.”
“We supported caste census for the purpose of uplifting backward communities. If the Bihar government fails to do so, we will start a protest against it,” he said.
He stressed that the caste census was not carried out just to increase the quota limit, for which the state government has approached the Supreme Court. Instead of waiting for a favourable verdict from the apex court, the Bihar government should withdraw it from the court, get it passed by the Bihar assembly and request the Centre to incorporate it into the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to make it immune from judicial scrutiny.
He said, “Nitish Kumar can easily get it done as he heads the NDA government in Bihar and his party is also a part of the central government. The Congress government in Telangana has achieved the same. Soon, you will see it happening in Karnataka.”