AURANGABAD: Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi stirred controversy Tuesday by claiming “10% of the country’s population” controls the Army, comments seen as an allusion to upper castes. “…Only 10% of the country’s population get opportunities in corporate sectors, bureaucracy, and judiciary... even the Army is under their control. The remaining 90% – backward classes, Dalits, STs, and minorities – are nowhere to be seen,” Rahul said while campaigning in Bihar’s Aurangabad and Kutumba ahead of the first phase of assembly polls on Thursday.The comments echoed calls by Congress’s Rahul and other opposition parties over the past year for a national caste census but this was the first time he had referred to the Army while highlighting such demands.Rahul asserted that such a census would identify “the 90% Indians sitting outside the system” and help protect their rights and constitutional guarantees. “If 90% people don’t have participatory rights, the Constitution can’t be protected. We want the data. How many Dalits, OBCs, women, minorities… are there. We are trying to protect the Constitution through this demand for a caste census,” Rahul said.Rahul has made controversial comments about the Army earlier, drawing legal censure. He was rapped by Supreme Court in Aug for claiming during his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ over two years ago that “Chinese troops are thrashing Indian soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh”. The comment was made in reference to the face-off with China in Arunachal’s Tawang in Dec 2022. Earlier in May, Allahabad HC had rejected a plea by Rahul challenging summons in a case, saying freedom of speech didn’t include the right to “defame” the Army. On Bihar poll trail Tuesday, Rahul lashed out at what he described as PM Narendra Modi’s “digital distractions” as he accused Centre of using social media to divert youths from the real issues of unemployment and inequality.“They gave cheap data instead of jobs. They told youth to make reels instead of asking questions. Watching and making reels has become an addiction – a distraction to keep young people silent. The money goes to industrialists. Youths are left with entertainment as a drug,” Rahul said.He accused CM Nitish Kumar of having “reduced Bihar’s youth to becoming nation’s labourers”, saying the CM had failed to create opportunities for the young. “Bihar, once home to the world-renowned Nalanda University, has now been reduced to a land where young people are forced to migrate across India for menial work. Nitish has made the sons of this soil labourers, not builders of Bihar’s future,” Rahul said.
