The Union government is yet to take a call on conducting the next Census exercise but active discussion is on to expand the data collection to include caste enumeration, a top government source told The Hindu.
“Discussions are on to includte a column to record the caste of people during the next Census exercise. No decision has been taken yet,” the source said.
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The move comes amid persistent demands by the Congress and other political parties, including alliance partners of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to enumerate caste.
“One of the reasons that has indefinitely delayed the Census is also the demand by political parties to conduct caste Census. Any wrong narrative can upset the whole exercise,” said the source.
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Other than that of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and the Scheduled Tribes (ST), the caste-wise enumeration of population as part of the Census has not been done in Independent India.
In 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) conducted the first-ever caste count, separate from the Census exercise, but the findings were never made public.
In 2021, the Union government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court that the caste data enumerated in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 was fraught with “mistakes and inaccuracies”. The total number of castes according to the 1931 Census was 4,147 and the SECC compiled more than 46 lakh castes, sub-castes and names. “Assuming that some castes may bifurcate into sub-castes, the total number cannot be exponentially high to this extent,” the affidavit read, adding that the data cannot be relied on for reservation in education, employment or elections to local authorities.
The Census, last held in 2011, was to be undertaken in two phases: Houselisting and Housing Schedule in 2020 and Population Enumeration in 2021, but it was indefinitely delayed, initially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Population Register (NPR) is also to be updated simultaneously with the first phase of the Census.
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The next Census will also be the first digital Census where respondents will have the option to fill the questionnaire on their own.
The deadline to freeze administrative boundaries of districts, tehsils, towns and municipal bodies, among others, lapsed on June 30 this year. The order to freeze the boundaries, usually issued three months before the first phase of Census, has been extended ten times since 2019.
Bihar was one of the first States to conduct and publish a caste census report in 2023. Collected in the offline and digital modes, the enumerators were given a list of 215 categories, from which people had to choose their caste.
Earlier in 2015, the Congress government in Karnataka commissioned a caste census, the report of which has not been made public so far.
The 31 questions for the first phase — Houselisting and Housing Schedule — were notified on January 9, 2020. As many as 28 questions have been finalised for the second phase — Population Enumeration — but are yet to be notified. The final set of questions for both the phases were asked during a pre-test exercise in 2019 in 76 districts in 36 States and Union Territories, covering a population of more than 26 lakh.
