'Can't understand why people have problem': Nitish on plea against caste survey

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday expressed annoyance over opposition from some quarters to the headcount of castes being conducted by his government in the stateKumar the states longestserving CM was replying to questions from journalists on a petition in the Patna High Court challenging the caste survey on which arguments from both sides have concluded and an order was awaitedThe petitioners as well as the government have made their respective submissions Now we are looking forward to the verdict said Kumar who ordered the survey after repeated requests to the Centre for undertaking a headcount of all castes as part of the census were turned downAlso Read Nitish slams BJP for opposing exMP Anand Mohans release from jailBut I cannot understand why people have a problem with the survey The last time a headcount was done was way back in 1931 We certainly have a fresh estimate After all the census takes into account respective populations of minorities Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes every ten years he addedUnfortunately and for reasons hard to fathom even the census seems to be hanging fire pointed out the JDU leader referring to the census that was due in 2021 but got delayed on account of the pandemicKumar said the caste survey was ordered in the state after taking all political groups into confidenceResolutions in favour of the caste census were passed twice unanimously in both Houses of the state legislature Representatives of all parties had joined me in making a formal request to the prime minister he recalledAfter they the Centre declined we decided to undertake an exercise limited to the state That decision too was taken at a meeting where representatives of all the nine political parties which have members in the legislature were present said KumarHe reiterated that the exercise once complete would be beneficial to all and claimed that barring a few exceptions all people in the state were in favourNotably the petition before the high court has been filed by a social outfit and some individuals who had last month moved the Supreme Court after their request for an interim relief in the form of a stay on the survey was turned downThe apex court too refused to interfere and referred them back to the high court with directions that their petition be decided expeditiouslyReplying to a query on his Goa counterpart Pramod Sawants controversial statement about migrants the Bihar CM voiced disapprovalTurning towards his deputy Tejashwi Yadav Kumar said He and many other political leaders in Bihar have registered their protest I do not wish to add much except that people should refrain from uttering such thingsSawant had blamed migrant workers from Bihar for 90 per cent of crimes taking place in the coastal stateWhile the BJP which is in power in Goa has defended Sawant blaming the Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar for the image problem parties in the ruling coalition have decried the remark and a local leader of the Chief Ministers JDU has even lodged a complaint before a courtThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever