Representatives of 14 backward classes association led by National BC Welfare Association president R. Krishnaiah have requested the Centre to take up 2021 Census with caste-wise enumeration of people.
A delegation of the BC associations met Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy here on Tuesday and requested him to include the column on caste in the Census proforma as it was not there in the 31-column proforma released by the Home Ministry recently. The proforma on the nationwide Census to be taken up from March 1 next year had the columns on SC, ST, Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities but there was no column for BCs, they pointed out.
Explaining the significance of BC census Mr. Krishnaiah said although there were several schemes implemented by the Central and State governments for the development of BC communities in education, employment, political and economic sectors lack of proper data on the BC population was denying the due benefits to them. He cited examples of governments facing problems in allocation of welfare benefits to BC communities in the absence of their population data.
He reminded Mr. Kishan Reddy that as the Opposition party, BJP had demanded preparation of BC caste-wise population data in 2010 when the Congress was in power at the Centre. On August 1, 2018, a decision was taken to take up BC caste-wise enumeration in Census by the then Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a high-level meeting but sought to know why there was change in its stand on the issue after it had returned to power last year.
Leaders of other BC associations, including N. Venkatesh, A Ramkoti, T. Nandagopal, V. Ramakrishna, B. Krishna, D. Suresh, Ananthaiah, C. Rajender, R. Chandrashekhar Goud and others, comprised the delegation. They later stated that the Union Minister had assured them that he would arrange a meeting of the BC association with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah soon on the issue.
