How Cong, BJP have considered caste census, then had a second thought

While Rs 5,000 crore was spent on collecting this data, the exercise finished too close to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP that formed the government next decided not to release the data, calling it unreliable.

Even under the Narendra Modi government, there have been noises about a caste census. On August 31, 2018, into the last year of its first term, after a meeting chaired by then Home Minister Rajnath Singh that reviewed preparations for Census 2021, the Press Information Bureau issued a statement, saying: “It is also envisaged to collect data on OBCs for the first time.”

However, that remained still-born as the Census itself has not been conducted so far, after first being put off due to the Covid pandemic. It is now expected to be held after the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.

The BJP has so far rejected the demands for a caste census, while calling itself the biggest proponent of OBCs, who are set to benefit the most from such a count.

The last enumeration of castes was done nearly a century back, in 1931, and since then, demands have been raised almost before every decadal Census that castes be counted.

UPA and SECC

A year before the 2011 Census, then Law Minister and senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily became among the first leaders within the party to suggest that caste / community data be collected. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who found himself under pressure for the same from parties founded on social justice platforms, like the RJD, Samajwadi Party and DMK, which were supporting the UPA, forwarded the suggestion to the Registrar General of India.

The matter came up in Parliament in May 2010. During a short-duration discussion initiated by the late BJP MP Ananth Kumar in the Lok Sabha, the SP, JD(U), RJD, DMK and BJP OBC leaders such as Gopinath Munde and Hansraj Ahir (now Chairman of the National Commission for Backward Classes) backed calls for a caste census.

However, Home Minister P Chidambaram opposed this, saying: “The Registrar General has pointed out a number of logistic and practical difficulties in canvassing the question of caste while conducting the Census. In this connection, we must keep the distinction between ‘enumeration’ on the one hand and ‘compilation, analysis and dissemination’ on the other. It has been pointed out that Census is meant to collect ‘observational data’. Twenty-one lakh enumerators, mostly primary school teachers, have been selected and trained. They have been trained to ask the question and record the answer as returned by the respondent. The enumerator is not an investigator or verifier…”

Chidambaram was forced to give up half-way through his reply as an uproar erupted and the House had to be adjourned.

While Sonia Gandhi stepped in to pacify leaders like the SP’s Mulayam Singh Yadav and the RJD’s Lalu Prasad, Manmohan Singh told the House when it re-assembled that “the Cabinet will make a decision shortly”.

Some days later, the PM said at a press conference that the process was still on. “Discussions on the issue will take place in the Cabinet and whatever decision is taken, will be brought before the people.”

After that, Singh constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM), under then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to decide on the matter. The GoM sought the response of various parties on this, and the BJP sent its on August 6, 2010: “The party reiterates that caste can be canvassed in the ongoing census/NPR exercise. We agree that caste should be canvassed in such a manner and at such a stage so that it does not affect the integrity of the head count (Census).”

Based on the GoM report, the Cabinet announced on September 9, 2010: “The caste enumeration would be conducted as a separate exercise from the month of June 2011 and completed in a phased manner by September 2011 after the Population Enumeration phase (to be conducted in February-March 2011) of the Census 2011 is over.”

This was the SECC.

Fate of SECC

The Ministry of Rural Development began the SECC exercise in 2011 but the enumeration of households and tabulation of the data were plagued by delays. Finally, this was completed by the end of 2012, with the final data ready only by the end of 2013, months to go for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. A call was reportedly taken to let the next government release the data.

In 2014, the Congress was trounced by the Modi-led BJP in the elections. Two months later, the Modi government told the Lok Sabha that completion of the SECC operations will take at least three more months. In July 2015, the Modi government released provisional data from the SECC for rural India. It said it was not releasing the caste data enumerated in the SECC as it was not finalised.

In July 2016, the government formed an Expert Group under then NITI Aayog Vice-Chairperson Arvind Pangariya for “classification” and “categorisation” of data.

Since then, the data has kept shunting between the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Registrar General of India.

In March 2018, the BJP government told the Lok Sabha that “certain errors have been observed during the processing of caste data” and that it had been handed over to the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner for processing.

In August, the government told the Rajya Sabha that the processing of caste data was taking time due to certain design issues at the stage of data collection. Its reply also said that the planned Expert Group had not been set up.

In September 2021, the government, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, effectively ruled out holding a caste census, saying “exclusion of information regarding any other caste”, apart from SCs and STs, “from the purview of census is a conscious policy decision”.

Currently, four PILs seeking a caste census are pending before the Supreme Court. Mahesh Chary, an advocate in two of the PILs (representing Hyderabad-based social activist G Mallesh Yadav and retired government official Alla Ramkrishna in one case; and a Rajya Sabha YSRCP MP Krishnaiah in the other), says: “In its counter-affidavit, the (Central) government has opposed a caste census. We have requested for a larger Bench considering the importance of the matter.”

The other petitions are by Delhi-based advocate Tinku Saini and Chennai-based activist G Karunanidhi.

In the ongoing Supreme Court hearing over the Bihar caste survey, the Centre opposed the Nitish Kumar government move saying that only the Registrar General of India is equipped to do a “census”. The Bihar government argued that what it was doing was a “survey” and not a “census”.

Meanwhile, as the Congress climbs onto the OBC bandwagon, senior leader Rahul Gandhi recently said it was a “mistake” that the SECC data had not been put out by the UPA government and urged the Modi government to reveal it.