Questioning the Congress’ proposition that the rights of a community should be in proportion to its numbers in a society, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 3 asserted that poor people should have the first rights over the country’s resources as they formed the biggest chunk of the population.
Mr. Modi was addressing a public meeting in Chhattisgarh’s Jagdalpur, a day after the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government released a caste survey revealing that people from the other backward classes (OBCs) and extremely backward classes (EBCs) constitute a whopping 63% of Bihar’s population. The Congress has hailed the findings of the survey, with its leader Rahul Gandhi saying that a nationwide caste-based census was needed to ensure representation in accordance with the population.
