Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have raised concerns over the proposed method of collecting caste details in the upcoming Census, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to review the process to ensure that the exercise produces accurate and reliable data.
Kharge, the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said credible caste figures were essential for framing effective social justice policies and assessing the socio-economic conditions of different communities.
In a letter to Prime Minister Modi, the Congress leaders objected to the government’s decision to use an open-ended question to record caste details. “Your government has chosen the method of recording caste information in the census using open-ended questions, which is misleading,” they said.
Kharge, Rahul Gandhi flag caste questions
The leaders argued that the open-ended format could create significant inconsistencies because the same caste may be known by different names, sub-castes or spellings across different parts of the country. They warned that if members of the same caste provide different names when responding to the census, the data could end up categorising them as separate communities.
"This will result in millions of castes in the country, rendering the entire data obtained from the caste census useless," the letter said.
Kharge and Rahul Gandhi said such discrepancies could result in incorrect estimates of the population of various communities. They argued that inaccurate figures could have wider consequences, particularly for government policies concerning education, employment, welfare programmes, development planning and other social justice measures.
The Congress leaders also expressed concern that the proposed census questionnaire would not provide an accurate estimate of the country’s total Other Backward Classes (OBC) population. They pointed out that the questionnaire does not include the term “backward class”, which they said could further complicate the collection and classification of caste data.
Alternative methods suggested
As an alternative, Kharge and Rahul Gandhi proposed that the government use a fixed list of castes rather than allowing respondents to enter caste names freely. They suggested providing a drop-down option from which respondents could select their caste, arguing that this would reduce variations in names, spellings and classifications.
According to the Congress leaders, such a standardised list could be prepared using existing government records and official sources. These could include the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes list as well as information available with the Anthropological Survey of India.
They also referred to the caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar as examples of exercises where fixed caste lists were used. Copies of the caste lists from the Telangana Caste Survey-2024 and Bihar Caste Survey-2022 were attached to the letter submitted to the Prime Minister.
The Congress leaders maintained that a standardised approach would help prevent the fragmentation of caste groups in the census data and ensure that the figures collected can be effectively used for policy formulation. They stressed that accurate caste data is particularly important for assessing socio-economic inequalities and designing targeted measures for communities that require government support.
Their intervention comes ahead of the upcoming census, with the Congress seeking a more structured mechanism for collecting caste information so that the final data reflects the actual demographic composition of different communities across the country.
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