Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra enters Bihar day after Nitish jolt

Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered Bihar on Monday, a day after JDU chief Nitish Kumar broke ties with the Opposition alliance and repositioned himself as chief minister of BJP-led NDA. Speaking at Kishanganj, his first public address on entering Bihar, Gandhi didn't comment on Kumar's action but, instead, focused on caste census and social justice.

Reiterating Congress's recent commitment to conduct a caste census, he said: "It will be a revolutionary measure towards achieving social justice. Only after a caste census will the actual number of people belonging to SC, ST, OBC be revealed and only then justice can be delivered. That is why caste census is going to be revolutionary."

Incidentally, Gandhi got the inspiration to foist the caste census idea on Congress from the previous Kumar government ordering a survey. Gandhi is still pursuing the agenda although Kumar has now become a CM backed by BJP, which has never been a champion of caste census.


Gandhi said Bihar was the epicentre of social justice movements and the country looked forward to Bihar to achieve this cause. Incidentally, Congress paid a heavy price whenever Bihar began such movements, be it Jayaprakash Narayan's 'Total Revolution', Karpoori Thakur's backward caste quota plank or Lalu Prasad-Kumar's Mandal politics.