Watch: ‘I told you so…’ Rahul Gandhi posters outside Congress office claim credit for Centre's Caste census move

A day after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led union government decided to include caste enumeration in the upcoming national census, posters showing Rahul Gandhi, who had a long-standing demand for it, have been put up outside the Congress office in the national capital, according to a video by news agency ANI.

PM Modi-led Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA), on April 30 approved the enumeration of castes in the upcoming Census.

The Centre's push for caste enumeration has already stirred the political pot in the country, with the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi claiming credit ahead of the Bihar Assembly election.

Centre's announcement comes at a time when the Opposition, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at the forefront, has adopted caste census as a key election plank. It also comes six months ahead of the assembly election in Bihar, one of the states where Caste plays a key role in electoral outcomes.

RaGa welcomes move

Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday, April 30, welcomed the government's ‘sudden’ decision to include caste enumeration in the forthcoming census after ‘11 years of opposing it’.

Crediting the sustained campaign run by the Congress for the government's announcement on the Caste census, Gandhi said his immediate suspicion is that this could go the women's bill way in terms of implementation and demanded a specific date for it.

“I would like to reiterate that the Caste Census is the first step. Our vision is to bring a new development paradigm through the Caste Census. Not just reservations, but we are also asking central questions - be it OBCS, Dalits, Adivasis, what is their participation in this country? Through the Caste Census it will be found, but we have to go ahead of the Caste Census,” Gandhi said on Wednesday.

BJP's rivals, including the Congress, often turned to social justice politics, speaking about the empowerment of non-general castes, to counter its overarching plank of Hindutva. With the Modi government's decision on caste census, the BJP hopes to disarm them, at least for now.