Law Minister Fact Checks Rahul On OBC Officers, Gandhis Skip The Passage Of Historic Women’s Bill

The 128th Constitution Amendment Bill providing for women’s reservations was passed by the Lok Sabha with bipartisan support of 454 MPs. Yet oddly the Gandhis – both Sonia and Rahul — were missing from the House when the historic bill was passed with a thumping majority. Rahul in his speech made one of the weirdest points about OBC reservation and was duly fact checked by the law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal. He raked up the issue of near non-existence of OBCs among secretaries to the Government of India; he said there were only 3 OBCs among the 90 secretaries to GOI today. Rahul charged that “The moment the Opposition raises the issue of caste census, the BJP tries to create a new distraction, a new sudden event so that the OBC community and the people of India look the other way.”  Law Minister, a former Dalit IAS Officer, replied that OBC quota came in UPSC only post Mandal in 1992. Congress sources admitted that Rahul was clearly misguided by his advisors as it takes an officer nearly three decades to make the grade of GOI Secretary. As for the Bill, Meghwal made it clear that the bill had factored in implementation only post-delimitation in 2026 as the Government did not want the law to be “challenged” in courts. Sonia Gandhi in her speech said there should be OBC quota in the bill. Countering her, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey asked why the 1993 law providing for women quota in local bodies had not provided for OBC quota.