NEW DELHI: The government should come out with a clear-cut plan for undertaking caste census and leaders of various political parties should be consulted on it, CPI-M general secretary MA Baby said on Thursday.He also demanded a special session of Parliament to discuss the Pahalgam terror attack and the situation in its aftermath.Speaking after hoisting the CPI(M) flag at the party headquarters here to mark Labour Day, Baby said demand for caste census has been made by all opposition parties, including the CPI(M).”Government has to come out with clear-cut program when they are going to do the census. And in that, they can make their own decisions and we can react, or there can even be a consultation with floor leaders of various political parties in Parliament,” he said.In a major decision, the government on Wednesday announced that caste enumeration will be included in the forthcoming census exercise in a “transparent” manner.Baby noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said on multiple occasions that there are only four castes in India – poor, youth, women and farmers.However, he has now been “forced” to undertake the caste census, he stated.”We communists and Left forces fight for the rights of youth, workers, peasants, women and so on… caste oppression continues in Indian society, and caste discrimination leads to lots of problems, including the suicide or extrajudicial murder of Rohit Vemula,” he said.Vemula, a Dalit student of University of Hyderabad, died by suicide on campus allegedly due to caste-based discrimination in 2016.Baby said the last caste census was conducted almost a century ago, and it is important to know the socio-economic situation of different caste groups.
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