Bhubaneswar: With the Bihar government releasing its caste census report, opposition parties in Odisha Wednesday demanded that the Naveen Patnaik administration release the report of the OBC survey conducted this year.
Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Sarat Pattanayak also urged the state administration to conduct a caste survey, and said that if the BJD government fails to do so, the grand old party will undertake the exercise if it comes to power in the state next year.
The Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (OSCBC) has already conducted the OBC survey between May and June this year and submitted its report to the state government.
The state government had appointed Justice Raghunath Biswal as the chairman of the commission. The census was conducted among 120 castes falling under the OBC category in the state.
It was conducted to ascertain the financial, social, and educational status of the OBC communities.
Congress Legislature Party leader Narasingha Mishra alleged that the state government had not provided staff to assist the OBC commission.
“Even today, they are not assisting the commission. The BJD is completely anti-OBC. The report should be made public immediately,” he alleged.
BJP MLA Nauri Nayak alleged that the OBC survey was not done properly which “indicated that the government lacks commitment towards OBCs”, while demanding early release of the OBC survey report.
However, the BJD vice-president and MLA Debiprasad Mishra dismissed the opposition’s allegations and asserted that had the government been “anti-OBC”, it would not have constituted a commission in the first place.
Mishra said that though the OBC commission has prepared the survey report, some other castes are also demanding inclusion into the OBC list.
The government is seriously considering everything before making the final report public, he said.
Meanwhile, OPCC president Sarat Pattanayak urged the Odisha government to conduct a caste survey like in Bihar and publish the report.
“If the BJD government fails to do it, the Congress will undertake the exercise after coming to power in 2024,” he said.
In a statement, he demanded that the state government convene a one-day special session of the assembly and pass a resolution for conducting the caste survey.
“The Bihar government’s caste survey reveals that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute more than 63 per cent of that state’s population. But in Odisha, we don’t have a clear picture of the number of OBCs and EBCs. As a result, they are not getting their due share in jobs and reservations in educational institutions. This is a denial of social justice to them,” he added.
PTI