Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], May 1 (ANI): Following the Central government's announcement that they will also conduct a caste enumeration excercise with the national census, Telangana Congress leader V Hanumantha Rao said that this has been his demand of the opposition for a long time, and now even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has understood that the country 'will not run in the name of Ram,' and the government will have to work for the poor.

He added that the demand for caste census is a long standing one, with certain states doing their own caste census.

'The Narendra Modi government, the NDA govt decided in the cabinet meet that caste census will be done along with national census, but before this, I fought for 11 years for caste census, and make a separate ministry for common man, they didn't make it. Rahul Gandhi, going from Kanyakumari to Kashmir after meeting the farmers, poor, unemployed, he said that when we come to power, we will conduct a caste wise census.'

Talking about Telangana's own caste census, he highlighted how the exercise revealed that 56 per cent of all people in the state belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.

'How much ever share you have that is how much you will participate. Today our Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has also implemented the work. He gave 150 crore, and we went to every house and we found that 56 pc is our population (OBC)....then we gave 42 pc reservation too,' the Congress leader said.

Telangana started its caste census in November of 2024. The report of the census was submitted to the cabinet sub-committee on February 2. The survey covered nearly 1.1 crore families by conducting door to door surveys. According to the survey, 46.2 pc of the population comes in the Backward Classes category, 17.4 being SC, 10.4 pc being ST, 12.5 pc being Muslims, and 13.3 being Other Open Categories.

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday decided to include caste enumeration in the upcoming census.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated at a media briefing following the cabinet meeting that the decision demonstrates the present government's commitment to the holistic interests and values of the nation and society. (ANI)