The Nitish Kumar government’s ambitious survey of castes went underway in Bihar on Saturday with the ruling Mahagathbandhan promising uplift of all underdogs as a definite outcome besides hoping that the exercise will take the wind out of the sails of “anti-backwards” BJP.

The saffron party, which is pitted against Kumar, a former ally, now backed by erstwhile rival Lalu Prasad, raked up “caste carnages” witnessed in the past in a bid to stoke fears that the “two tallest products of Mandal” were out to plunge the state into yet another era of social strife.

The chief minister, however, reiterated that the mammoth exercise will benefit all sections of the society and announced that the survey’s report will be sent to the Union government which had refused to undertake such a headcount as part of the census.

“The survey will give an idea of the economic condition of all sections of the society. This is essential to take Bihar’s growth trajectory forward. We will send its report to the Centre as well.

“It is incumbent upon the Centre to ensure that all states do well, which alone can help the nation progress,” said Kumar, who also recalled having met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, heading an all-party delegation from the state, to press the demand for a caste-based census.

“The PM had said it will not be possible for the Centre to undertake such an exercise. But he had said that states were free to undertake a survey with their own resources,” recalled the CM.

Notably, Kumar had announced his government’s decision to undertake the survey in June last year when the cabinet also approved a budgetary outlay of Rs 500 crore for the exercise.

Initially, February, 2023 was set as the deadline for completing the exercise, but the process has started after much delay.

According to Mohammad Sohail, the secretary for General Administration Department, “Nearly 2.75 crore households will be covered under the exercise. About 3.5 lakh enumerators have been roped in who will be aided by other officials. There are strict instructions that not a single person in 534 blocks and 261 urban local bodies be left out.”

Of the total households across the state, over 20 lakh are in Patna district alone, where Chandrashekhar Singh, the District Magistrate and nodal officer of the exercise, said, “We are working towards completing the survey by May. In the first phase, which will be completed by the end of this month, the total number of households will be counted. In the next phase starting next month, details such as caste, sub-caste, religion etc. will be recorded.”

The chief minister, whose JD(U) had exited the NDA in August last year, was speaking to journalists in Vaishali district, where he had visited as part of his state-wide mass outreach programme Samadhan yatra.

He was accompanied by his deputy Tejashwi Yadav, the son of Lalu Prasad and RJD heir apparent who had, earlier in the day, set the tone for the political offensive of the Mahagathbandhan.

“I was then in the Opposition but the chief minister had agreed to my proposal and met the PM heading a delegation of which I was also a part. The BJP is a party of the rich and anti-backwards. A reason why it was uneasy with the proposal for a caste census,” Yadav had told reporters in Patna before accompanying Kumar on the trip to Vaishali.

Notably, the Centre had, in its statements before the Parliament as well as the Supreme Court, cited precedence and expressed the intent to continue with a headcount of only SCs and STs as part of the census.

This had met with protestations by leaders such as Kumar and Prasad who belong to the numerically powerful and politically ascendant OBCs. The “Mandalites”, as they are called in a section of the media, have been of the opinion that since the last time all castes were enumerated was way back in 1931 and it was high time that a fresh estimate was obtained.

Notably, resolutions in support of a caste census had been unanimously passed by the bicameral legislature in Bihar twice, in 2019 and 2020. The state BJP has been in a quandary over the stance adopted by the Centre. Leader of the Opposition in the assembly, Vijay Kumar Sinha, also voiced the concerns of his party with regard to the exercise.

“The two brothers (a colloquialism used in Bihar’s political lexicon for Lalu and Nitish) should try to understand why caste census was not undertaken again after 1931. At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been launching schemes for the downtrodden, we fear that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar may have chosen the path of his bade bhai (elder brother allusion to Lalu) whose reign was marked by caste carnages,” Sinha said in a statement.