The government on Tuesday told Parliament that the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011 had failed to collect data “correctly” and that it was now outdated, drawing the ire of OBC groups.
In response to a question from Bahujan Samaj Party MP Haji Fazilur Rehman on whether the government had data about Other Backward Classes living below poverty line and what actions are being taken to uplift them, minister of state for social justice Pratima Bhoumik said: “No Sir. The Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011 conducted by the ministry of rural development and the ministry of housing and urban affairs could not correctly capture the caste status of households other than SCs/STs (Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes). Besides, the data is now outdated.”
The OBC groups questioned the intention of the government and claimed the data was largely fine. They said the BJP-led NDA government had set up an expert panel in 2015 under then Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya to classify caste names returned in the SECC since the data was largely fine.
Justice Vangala Eswaraiah, former acting Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court and former chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), said certain enumeration errors in the data should have been corrected.
“Intentionally the government is not interested to release the caste data. They want to suppress the truth about injustice perpetuated by the dominant castes on OBCs,” Eswaraiah said.
“There might have been discrepancies in data in a few cases because of the mention of certain gotra or sub-caste names by the households. Such errors could have been corrected and the data should have been released,” he said.
Eswaraiah said: “Nearly 85 per cent of people who are mulnivasi of the country are poorly represented in public services and higher education.”
He underlined the need for proportionate representation of every community in public services and education and that caste data is crucial for this.
“When Rajnath Singh was the home minister, he had promised to include a column for collection of OBC caste data in the 2021 census. But the government backtracked later,” he said.
G. Karunanidhy, national general secretary of the All India OBC Employees Federation, said the government had set up an expert panel for classification of the caste data in 2015.
“If the data did not correctly capture the caste status of households other than SCs and STs, why did the government set up an expert panel for classification of the data? The government’s statement in Parliament is contrary to its earlier stand,” he said.
The SECC 2011-12 collected data on caste of the households apart from assets like telephone, motorcycle, land, pucca house, landlessness and tax payment. The government in 2015 released the economic data and set up a committee to classify the caste names. The committee has never met, Eswaraiah said.
“Thousands of crores of rupees have been spent for the SECC. Who is accountable for this? When the BJP was in the Opposition, (late) Gopinath Munde asked why the government was not conducting a caste census. Now the same party is forgetting its own stand because they do not want to annoy the upper castes,” Karunanidhy said.
The Bihar Assembly had passed two resolutions in 2019 and 2020 demanding a caste census and sent it to the Centre. Chief minister Nitish Kumar, whose Janata Dal United is an ally of the BJP, had also written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week for a meeting to discuss the need for a caste census.
