The Odisha government on May 1 began the survey of people from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) belonging to 210 castes in the State to determine their social and educational status, said an official.
Odisha is the second State to conduct the survey after Bihar.
The Odisha State Commission For Backward Classes (OSCBC) is conducting the survey across 314 blocks and 114 urban local bodies. People (heads or senior members of the family) have been asked to come to common service centres, PDS centres and Anganwadi centres with their ration cards and Aadhaar cards to fill up an exhaustive questionnaire.
State SC, ST and Backward Class Minister Jagannath Saraka said the survey will continue till May 27 with an aim to get clear picture about status of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC).
The heads of the family are giving details about personal information about him and other members of the family. Personal information such as institution last attended, occupation, educational status and date of birth are being asked.
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Apart from this, boxes meant for village code, ward code, Aadhaar details, ration card number and Socially Economically Backward Class and PAN numbers are required to be filled up. Besides, there is provision of people filling up the survey forms online.
The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which is the ruling party in the State, in a memorandum to Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said, “Since legislations of most of the States on reservation policies for the SEBC and the OBC had been struck down by the Supreme Court and the High Courts on the ground that the policies on reservation is made without any scientific data base of the SEBC and OBC population, it is imperative that detail enumeration of SEBC and OBC is to be made by Centre by inserting appropriate columns in the Census Format 2021 for identification of SEBC status of these categories of population.”
No formal Census, including caste details of the population, have been carried out since 1931 and unavailability of reliable and authentic data about the exact numbers of the SEBC and OBCs. As the country could not conduct decadal census in 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic, the State government has started its own survey.
“The survey being conducted in Odisha is faulty one. The SEBC list of the State has been tinkered with,” said State BJP OBC front President Surath Biswal. The Odisha government does not have reservation for the OBC communities in education sector and over 11% reservation in jobs does not fulfil the aspiration of about 54% of the total population, the Opposition party leaders said.
