PANAJI
Leaders of the numerically strong and politically significant Bhandari community met with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant at his official residence and pressed for a population census on a caste basis.
This is the second such meeting after these leaders had met Sawant back in October last year.
The community's leadership has been seeking a population census citing that no such exercise was carried out since the last census in 2011. The leaders say no accurate data on the population of OBCs, Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes is available in the State and as such the Bhandari community and other OBCs face injustice with regard to proportional quota in the reservation policy.
At the meeting in October last year, the Bhandari leaders had said that Sawant had assured them that his government would pursue with the Centre the issue of holding a population census exercise.
