Context: The government has made it clear in the Supreme Court that a caste census of the Backward Classes is “administratively difficult and cumbersome”.
Key Arguments by the Centre
The Centre reasoned that even when the census of castes were taken in the pre-Independence period, the data suffered in respect of “completeness and accuracy”.
Government has also said the caste data enumerated in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 is “unusable” for official purposes as they are “replete with technical flaws”.
The Centre said the raw caste/tribe data of 2011 was unusable. For example, Mappilas in Malabar region of Kerala were spelt in 40 different ways, resulting in the listing of 40 different castes.
SECC caste data is stored in the Office of the Registrar General and has not been made public (Economic Data of SECC is published).
The government said caste-wise enumeration in the decennial Census was given up as a matter of policy from 1951 as a policy of “official discouragement of caste”.
What is Census?
In Census (decennial census), data is collected on demographic and various socio-economic parameters like education, SC/ST, religion, language, marriage, fertility, disability, occupation and migration of the individuals.
Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India under Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India is responsible for carrying out the census.
It provides information on size, distribution and socio-economic, demographic and other characteristics of the country’s population.
The first synchronous census in India was held in 1881. Since then, censuses have been undertaken uninterruptedly once every ten years.
As per the official Gazette, the individual data collected in Census under the Census Act, 1948, are not made public as per the provisions contained in the Act.
The individual data are not used for the preparation of any other database, including the National Register of Citizens.
Only the aggregated Census data at various administrative levels are released.
Owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, Census 2021 and other Census-related field activities have been postponed until further orders.
