During the ongoing Bihar Assembly election campaign, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political predecessor, the Jan Sangh, of bringing down former Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur’s government in 1979 after he introduced reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) .
Ramesh made the allegation in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on October 24, 2025, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Karpoorigram, Thakur’s ancestral village in Bihar, where Modi launched the NDA’s campaign by paying tribute to Thakur �. In the post, Ramesh called it an “acknowledged fact” that Jan Sangh leaders, along with the RSS, opposed Thakur’s OBC reservation policy and “subjected him to vile abuse” at the time.
The Congress leader’s remarks were part of three pointed questions he posed to the Prime Minister:
Whether it is not true that the Jan Sangh toppled Karpoori Thakur’s government in April 1979 for introducing OBC reservations.
Why the Modi government had rejected the call for a caste census, labeling its proponents as “urban Naxals.”
Why the central government had not moved to provide constitutional protection for Bihar’s 65 percent reservation for SCs, STs, OBCs, and EBCs, as the Congress did in Tamil Nadu in 1994 .
The statement reflects Congress’s effort to challenge the BJP’s recent attempts to claim Thakur’s legacy as a champion of social justice and backward caste empowerment in Bihar.
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