Census 2027 to enumerate caste-wise population: Centre

New Delhi: Centre informed the Parliament on Wednesday that the questionnaire for the second phase of Census 2027 will have questions to enumerate the caste-wise population in the country.

"Questions for the second phase (of the census), including the questions on caste, will be notified before the commencement of the second phase," Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said in a written answer tabled in the Rajya Sabha in response to a question asked by DMK MP Rajathi.

The decennial enumeration of the country’s population is conducted in two phases by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, which comes under the Union Home Ministry.

In the first phase of the census, also called House Listing Enumeration, information like housing conditions, assets, amenities, etc are collected from each household. The second phase, Population Enumeration, is designed to count the demographics, socio-economic, cultural, and other details of every person.

Earlier this month, the Registrar Census, for the first phase of population count, had notified a questionnaire that had a question asking whether the head of the household belonged to the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, or ‘Other’ category.

The Opposition had raised doubts over the omission of a similar query for OBC and General Category households, if Census 2027, as announced by the Modi government, was mandated to enumerate all castes.

In response to another question in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, the government informed parliament that enumerators deployed for the census would collect data in paper mode “only in unavoidable circumstances.” Otherwise, the data collection for the first phase would primarily be done using Mobile Apps, Census Management and Monitoring Portal and Self Enumeration Portal.

The last caste census in India was done in 1931. Post-independence, census counts have tabulated the population under three heads — the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribe and others. The Mandal Commission Report, which is the basis for the OBC reservations implemented in 1989, has extrapolated numbers from the 1931 Census Report.

In the absence of updated empirical data, there has been a growing demand for conducting the Caste census. Many states in the last five years have commissioned surveys to estimate caste-wise population.