Cabinet okays caste count

New Delhi, Sept. 9: The Union cabinet has approved a caste census to be conducted between June and September next year, separate from the ongoing Census 2011.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram said after the cabinet meeting that the census to enumerate castes other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would be a separate house-to-house count after the biometric phase of the ongoing census in December and its headcount in February.

“The group of ministers will assess the cost,” he said. The GoM had earlier recommended that caste enumeration should be a separate exercise. The cabinet has decided that the “caste” of all persons as returned by them would be canvassed in the census.

The Centre will formulate a “suitable legal regime for collection of data on castes” in consultation with the ministry of law and justice. It will also “constitute an expert group to classify the caste/tribe returns after the enumeration is completed”. The office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, would hand over the details of the castes/tribes returned in the census to the proposed expert group.

“Caste-wise enumeration had been given up as a matter of policy after Independence. The last census when caste-wise data was collected, tabulated and published in detail was the 1931 Census,” a government statement said.

However, every census enumerates the population of SCs and STs.

The decision to conduct a caste census came after demands were raised inside Parliament as well as by various groups outside. First, the cabinet decided in a meeting in May that “the matter would require further examination”.

Later in the same month, it decided that “the matter may, in the first instance, be considered by a Group of Ministers”.

A GoM headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was constituted. It held three meetings before recommending to the Union cabinet that castes be enumerated separately from Census 2011.


The Telegraph