Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s planned visit to the birthplace of revered socialist leader Karpoori Thakur, the Congress party issued a pointed challenge on Friday, October 24, 2025. They questioned whether it’s widely known that the Jan Sangh was responsible for destabilizing Mr. Thakur’s Bihar government in April 1979, precisely when he introduced reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
The opposition further pressed on whether the Prime Minister and his state government had failed to uphold Bihar’s 65% reservation law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), as enshrined in the Constitution.
This sharp criticism precedes Prime Minister Modi’s scheduled election rallies in the Samastipur and Begusarai districts. Before his public address in Samastipur, the Prime Minister is set to visit Karpurigram, the ancestral village of Karpoori Thakur, the late socialist icon and former Bihar Chief Minister who was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna by the NDA government last year.
Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary in charge of communications, directly questioned the Prime Minister. He asked if it was not an undeniable fact that the Jan Sangh, the ideological predecessor of the BJP, orchestrated the downfall of Karpoori Thakur’s government in April 1979 after Thakur implemented OBC reservations. Mr. Ramesh also highlighted the alleged ‘vilest abuse’ that Karpoori Thakur endured from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Jan Sangh leaders at that time.
Mr. Ramesh further inquired if the Prime Minister had not, on April 28, 2024, labeled those advocating for a caste census as ‘urban naxals.’ He also brought up the fact that the government had explicitly rejected a caste census in Parliament on July 20, 2021, and again in the Supreme Court on September 21, 2021.
Concluding his remarks, the Congress leader questioned whether the Prime Minister and his state administration had done anything to safeguard Bihar’s 65% reservation law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, and EBCs under the Indian Constitution. He drew a parallel to the Congress government’s proactive protection of a similar law in Tamil Nadu in September 1994.