Decision on caste survey only after census: Maharashtra CM Shinde

Mumbai: As Maharashtra faces reservation issues like Marathas vs OBC and Dhangar vs Adivasis and the demand for caste census keeps emerging, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Wednesday said that decision on any such exercise would be undertaken after eliciting the opinion of all sections of society and keeping sentiments of the people in mind.

“Here all the communities and castes live together, work together and celebrate together. Hence, after taking the opinion of all sections of society an appropriate decision will be taken keeping feelings of the people in mind,” Shinde said.

Shinde’s comments came on the last day of the Nagpur winter session of the Maharashtra legislature - when he visited the RSS headquarters in the state’s winter capital.

Shinde paid tributes to RSS founder and Dr Reshav Baliram Hedgewar and Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar, popularly known as Guruji, who was the second Sarsanghchalak. “This place is very inspiring and peaceful,” Shinde said.

Ministers and legislators belonging to the BJP visit the memorial of Hedgewar and Golwalkar in Nagpur during the winter session and after Shinde-led Shiv Sena forged an alliance with the saffron party, he too is visiting the memorial.

“Pur government has been formed on the ideology of Hindutva and the ideology of late Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray….this Hindutva of development, as also said by our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), is for sabka saath, sabka vikas," he said.

The résponse on caste census by Shinde comes a day after senior RSS functionary Shridhar Gadge said there should no caste-based census and sought to know what will be achieved by it.