NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma has written to party president Mallikarjun Kharge saying a caste census cannot be a panacea nor a solution for unemployment and inequalities in society.Sharma’s letter comes at a time the Congress has intensified its demand for a nationwide caste census and promised to carry out the exercise if elected to power in the Lok Sabha elections.In his letter to Kharge, Sharma said the Congress has never engaged in nor endorsed identity politics and the departure from the historic position of the party is a matter of concern for many.He also said that the articulation of party position should be balanced and should eschew the radical posturing of regional and caste-based organisations.It needs mention that the last census to enumerate caste differentiation was in 1931 during the British colonial regime, he wrote.After independence, a conscious policy decision was made by the government not to canvass caste-related questions in the census, except for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which is collected by the states.
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