The Registrar General of India (RGI) anticipates “organised movement” against the decennial Census exercise such as agitation for inclusion of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and court cases against the collection of data for the National Population Register (NPR).
The concern is documented in the Census of India 2021 Handbook for Principal/District Census Officers and Charge Officers that has been shared with all States last year.
Several States, including Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, have written to the Union government demanding an OBC Census. The caste Census is a contentious issue in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh assembly elections with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav promising to conduct the caste headcount within three months of coming to power.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has reiterated on multiple occasions in the Parliament that data on castes, communities and OBCs other than the notified Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Caste are not collected in the Census.
The handbook meant for field officers, collated by the office of the RGI that conducts the Census exercise includes a section on “Dealing with Organised Movements and Court Cases Against Census”.
It says that the Census is conducted with adequate legal backing and only the notified questions are asked and the respondents are legally bound to answer the questions. “Nevertheless, protests and organised movements may erupt at the local level. This could be due to prejudices and ignorance or deliberate miscampaign regarding the Census exercise and the data collected,” the document says.
It adds, “Agitations for inclusion of plantation labour as agriculture labour, inclusion of certain groups belonging to a particular religion, Other Backward Castes [classes] in Census are some examples of such organised movements.”
The RGI also also anticipates that the collection of data to update the National Population Register (NPR) may also give rise to certain demands and objections. “Census organisation can be dragged to courts as part of such demands and agitations. The Census officers at the local level need to be cautious about such demands and agitations and should be able to educate people on the legal and technical position of the Census to the agitators and should allay their apprehensions,” it says. The document added that the officials should inform the Director of Census Operations about such activities so that suitable action could be taken to “defuse such misplaced movements”.
The Union government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on September 23 last year where it ruled out conducting a Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), stating that caste Census was unfeasible, “administratively difficult and cumbersome”.
The SECC that was first conducted in 2011 and collected data of 130 crore Indians threw up 46 lakh different caste names whereas the total number of castes as per the last caste Census of 1931 was 4,147 at the national level.
The State and Union Government has separate OBC lists for reservation in government jobs and education sector.
The first phase of Census 2021 — the Houselisting and Housing Census — along with updating the NPR was scheduled to be held from April-September, 2020 but postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second and main phase of the decennial Census exercise — population enumeration — was to be concluded by March 5, 2021
The first phase of the Census has now been postponed to at least September. The RGI in December 2021 informed the States that freezing of boundaries of districts, sub-districts, tehsils, talukas, police stations etc. has been postponed till June, 2022. Freezing of boundary limits of administrative units, at least three months prior, is a pre-requisite for conducting the Census.
