Chennai: Former AIADMK minister C Ve Shanmugam on Thursday urged state govt to conduct an independent, statewide caste survey, cautioning in assembly that social justice in the state was under quiet attack.Intervening in the debate on demands for grants for the social justice department, the Mailam MLA said Tamil Nadu had pioneered reservation policies. He cited recent anti-reservation protests in New Delhi and changing legal definitions concerning OBC income criteria.Shanmugam said Union govt policies and ambiguous data-collection methods risked diluting equitable access. He criticised methods adopted by Union govt, from the 1951 Census to the 2011 social counts, saying they created administrative confusion instead of providing transparent social data on backward classes.He urged state govt to stop citing jurisdictional issues and take responsibility for assessing local demographics. Tamil Nadu’s roster of 181 OBC and 252 MBC/DNC communities already provided the structural baseline needed to accurately measure social representation, he said.Shanmugam said nearly 90% of the state’s 15 lakh public-sector employees had benefited directly from reservation quotas. He argued that empirical data was essential and an independent survey was the only way to ensure public employment, educational quotas and welfare schemes reached communities needing them most.
