Having blindsided the Opposition, particularly the Congress, with the announcement of caste enumeration in the Census, the BJP is working on a multi-pronged strategy to counter any projection of this as a vindication of the Opposition’s stand.

Making the announcement Wednesday, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stressed that while the BJP government had taken the call to count castes in the Census, the Congress at the Centre had dodged this in the past and used it merely as “a political tool”. BJP sources said that the party’s campaign on the caste census move will be centred around this, using different examples to underline its point.

“The exercise will be the first ever caste census post-Independence and, the fact is, it will be under a BJP leadership, despite the Congress and the Gandhis being at the helm of the affairs for decades,” a source said, adding that a Congress-led government’s one attempt at this had also come a cropper. “The UPA government spent around Rs 5,000 crore to conduct a survey (Socio Economic and Caste Census), but could not release the data.”

On Thursday, the BJP circulated a letter written by then Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj to UPA Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in 2010, saying her party supported a caste census. “The party reiterates that caste can be canvassed in the on-going Census/NPR exercise (due in 2011). We agree that caste should be canvassed in such a manner and at such a stage that it does not affect the integrity of the head count (Census),” Swaraj wrote.

The UPA government led by Manmohan Singh had chosen to go in for an SECC, delinked from the Census.

The BJP will point out that the Modi government’s announcement of a caste census was another example of the party’s government taking significant reforms to their logical conclusion, the source said, “be it the GST, direct bank transfers through Aadhaar, the women’s reservation Bill or constitutional status for the OBC commission”. BJP leaders also point to the Congress government at the Centre sitting on the Mandal Commission report for a long time, and which, once unveiled under the National Front government led by V P Singh, changed the contours of politics by bringing backward classes to the fore.

“The Congress initiatives in this regard were knee-jerk reactions that lacked determination and conviction,” the source said, adding that now nobody associates these moves with the Congress. “This time, it will be no different.”