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Congress MP Manickam Tagore said on Sunday that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) wants to keep the caste hierarchy in order, adding that "the upper caste people in the top, the lower, OBC classes and scheduled castes in the lower level of society are their order."
While speaking to ANI, Tagore raised his demand for a caste census in order to eliminate the caste system through a justifiable process on Sunday. "We want the caste system to be eliminated through a justifiable process; therefore, we are asking for the caste census. Only then can the real discrimination be addressed," he said. He further lashed at the RSS, saying, "RSS is against reservation, constitution and caste elimination. RSS wants the caste system to be celebrated and the Constitution to be changed. RSS wants India to be a uni-religious state... These are the things of the RSS that are against the principles of Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar." This came after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on August 1, which stated that the states now have the power to subclassify SCs and STs and said that the authority concerned, while deciding if the class is adequately represented, must calculate adequacy based on effective and not quantitative representation. The top court ruled by a majority judgement of 6:1, that sub-classification within the SCs and STs reservation is permissible. BJP's SC/ST MPs ministers, including Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Meghwal, L. Murugan, V. Satish, and Kamlesh Paswan (Rural Development), Savitri Thakur (MoS, Women and Child Development), and Durgadas Uikey (MoS, Tribal Affairs), Shantanu Thakur were present in the meeting. As many as six separate opinions were delivered in the case. The judgement was delivered by a seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, which overruled earlier judgement in the EV Chinnaiah matter, which had held that sub-classification was not permissible because SC/STs form homogenous classes. Besides CJI Chandrachud, other judges on the bench were Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Sharma. Justice BR Gavai suggested that the state evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer, even the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, to exclude them from the benefit of affirmative action. Justice Bela M. Trivedi, in a dissenting opinion, said that she disagreed with the majority judgement that sub-classification within the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes is permissible. (ANI)
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