The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) conducted a caste-based survey on a sample size of 68,000 people, in Uttar Pradesh on September 2. The report released by AAP UP in-charge Sanjay Singh claimed that 63% of residents in UP believe that the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in the state was ‘casteist’, whereas 28% of residents think the opposite and 9% chose to reserve their opinion.

According to the AAP report, 63% of people agreed that CM Adityanath’s dispensation is biased and that the government is only towards the Thakur community. Whereas, 28% responded with a ‘no’ to the question.

The party has also accused the UP police of ‘interrupting’ the survey.

‘The survey has now been closed because the UP police had started taking action against the people of the agency. Calls have been made to people in almost every part of UP and no area was left out. If the police had not stopped it, we would have done it on a bigger scale,’ AAP MLA from Delhi’s Timarpur, Dilip Pandey, alleged.

Pandey said that the party did not disclose that the survey was conducted on behalf of AAP ‘to avoid a biased response’. He said, ‘It would have affected the relevance of the survey. People would have been biased. The phone numbers will also be kept confidential.’

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Police on September 1 registered a first information report (FIR) in Lucknow against unidentified people. Soon after the FIR, AAP’s member Sanjay Singh admitted his involvement in the caste-based survey on the functioning of the Yogi-led government in UP.

Singh targeted the UP government for being casteist and tweeted: ‘Murders of Brahmins and Dalits in UP are not a crime, but a survey whether the Yogi government is casteist is a crime.’

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