Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday welcomed the women’s reservation bill brought by the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, but with a few riders, including quotas for women from OBCs and Extremely Backward Classes.
The JD(U) supreme leader, whose party has 16 MPs in the Lok Sabha, also rued the Centre’s “failure to conduct the census, which should have been held by 2021”, after which fresh delimitation of constituencies in assemblies and Parliament would, as per the bill, precede the implementation of women’s reservation.
Kumar said, in a statement issued by the CMO, that there should be quotas for women from Other Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes.
“Had the census been held, the quotas for women would have been possible much earlier. The Centre must expedite census and also undertake a headcount of castes,” the Bihar CM said. Notably, “caste census”, in which social groups other than the SCs and STs are also counted, has been a long-standing demand of Kumar, which was turned down by the Modi government, prompting him to order a similar survey of castes at the state level.
