AIADMK general secretary and Leader of the Opposition Edappadi K. Palaniswami asserted on Wednesday that the State governments were “fully empowered” to conduct a caste-based survey.
Interacting with journalists, he recalled how his party, while being in power, issued a government order in December 2020, appointing A. Kulasekaran, former judge of the Madras High Court, as a one-man commission for collection of quantifiable data on castes, communities and tribes of the State. The tenure of the commission was six months. When it lapsed, there was a change of government. The DMK government did not extend its tenure.
He accused the DMK government of enacting a “drama” by getting a resolution adopted in the Assembly, which urged the Union government to conduct a caste-based census along with the decennial census. This had been done with an eye on the by-election to the Vikravandi Assembly constituency, where a large number of Vanniyars live, the AIADMK leader contended.
