Jharkhand school survey to get ‘Other’ religion category after objection

Following the objections, the Education Department modified the portal and added an ‘Other’ religion option.

According to officials, the DAHAR survey, introduced in Jharkhand over a decade ago and later upgraded as DAHAR 2.0, is a key tool used by both the Centre and the state to assess school coverage, identify dropouts, and plan infrastructure and welfare interventions under the Samagra Shiksha campaign.

Adivasi leaders, including Premshahi Munda and former minister Geetashree Oraon, had earlier flagged that the absence of an ‘Other’ category in school-level surveys effectively rendered Adivasi religious identity invisible in official education data, potentially affecting policy planning and budget allocations.

Congress leader Geetashree Oraon alleged that the Centre had been broadly doing away with the ‘Other’ religion option from government portals since 2020, leading to the erosion of the constitutionally recognised identity of Adivasis, and that the same approach is now being reflected in school-level data collection exercises.

“The Sarna community strongly opposes the conduct of any census or survey in a Fifth Schedule state like Jharkhand without a separate or appropriate religion code for Adivasis. This is the government’s strategy to forcefully bring the Adivasis into the Hindu fold and to destroy the Sarna identity,” she said.

Speaking to The Indian Express, JEPC Project Director Shashi Ranjan said the DAHAR 2.0 survey format was adopted from the Union government and that the state had merely digitised an existing questionnaire used for annual out-of-school children surveys.

“This is an annual exercise. Earlier, it was done physically through a detailed form in which the ‘Other’ category was already in-built. When we made it app-based, some fields did not reflect properly due to technical issues. These issues have been corrected,” he said.