Rahul 'regrets' not including OBC quota in women's reservation bill during UPA rule

As Congress raised the pitch on OBC plank, its top leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday “regretted” not including the quota within women’s quota when the Congress-led UPA passed the Women’s Reservation Bill in Rajya Sabha 13 years ago.

He also said Narendra Modi government’s Bill on women’s quota, especially with a provision for a census and delimitation to precede its implementation, was meant to be a “diversion and distraction” from the demand for a Caste Census raised by Congress and its allies.

Addressing a press conference a day after Parliament cleared the hurdles for earmarking 33 per cent seats for women in Parliament and Assemblies, Rahul said, “I have 100 per cent regret (that we didn’t do it then). It should have been done then. We will do it.”

He was responding to a question whether he regretted that a provision for OBC women was not there in the UPA Bill and that if it had been there, women’s quota would have been a reality at least ten years ago. The Congress and other Opposition parties voted in favour of the Bill despite their demand for an OBC quota was not accepted.

In Parliament, Congress fielded its top guns Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and KC Venugopal to demand a quota within quota in the Women’s Bill, a drastic change from its 2010 stand when they rejected the idea.

Rahul said the new Bill could be implemented “today” and it is not a complicated issue as it is made out. “It is not going to be implemented today, and every woman in India should understand this, it is not going to be implemented, it's going to be implemented, if it is implemented, ten years from now.”

He said he raised the issue of OBC representation in the top bureaucracy where only three out of 90 Secretaries belong to backward classes. “The response from the BJP was that they have this many MPs from the OBC . How is it relevant to the issue I raised?” he said.

When asked about the OBC representation during Congress rule, he admitted that it was “not good” but that does not mean that others should continue with the mistake. 

“Only 5 per cent of India’s budget is controlled by these three Secretaries. Is the OBC population 5 per cent in India? If it is, then I accept it. If it is not, then they get more representation…For this we need a count and that is why we insist on Caste Census,” he said.

Asked whether what prompted a change in stand on OBC quota, Rahul said, “we have not shifted our stand. We are the party that did the caste census, we carried out an entire census getting caste data. We didn’t release that at the time, there was a discussion, internal discussion. We should have released that at the time and it should be released now, there is no change in our view on this.”

Congress sources said they could not include Caste Census in the general census process in 2011 as there were differences within as well as the demand gained more ground only after the census process started. They said one of the biggest opponents was Pranab Mukherjee.

However, they said, they did a separate Caste Census covering 25 crore households. However, there were discrepancies in the data set, prompting a clean up process. By 2014-end, sources added, this process was finished.

If the Modi government wanted, sources said, they could have released it. They also said there was nothing in the census law that prevented the government from introducing a caste count.