The Centre on Wednesday announced its decision to conduct caste enumeration along with the next regular census without committing to a time frame after having sat on data from a previous exercise for over a decade.

Several activists and academics said the conduct of caste surveys, focused on Other Backward Classes (OBCs), by several states to raise reservation quotas might have forced the Centre’s hand. The Congress and other Opposition parties have also been demanding a nationwide caste census, making it a major election plank.

The government’s decision comes ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar later this year where some BJP allies have come out in support of the caste census.

Union information and broadcasting minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday announced the decision taken by the cabinet committee on political affairs.

Vaishnaw said a caste census had never been conducted since Independence.

“Article 246 in the Constitution provides for the conduct of the census. Some states have conducted surveys to enumerate castes. Some states have done this well, while some others have conducted such surveys purely from a political angle in a non-transparent way. Such surveys have created doubts in society,” Vaishnaw said.

“Considering all these facts, and to ensure that our social fabric is not disturbed by politics, caste enumeration should be transparently included in the census instead of surveys,” he added.

However, the absence of a deadline has raised questions about whether the government has any intention of conducting the exercise in the immediate future.

Delay in the implementation of policies or postponement of deadlines has been a recurrent theme for several initiatives launched by the NDA government.

In September 2023, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was passed in Parliament to provide 33 per cent reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies. BJP leader J.P. Nadda had said in the Rajya Sabha that the bill would be implemented only in 2029.

In July 2021, the minister of state for home affairs, Nityananda Rai, told Parliament that the Centre had decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCs and STs in the regular census.

Justice Vengala Eswaraiah, former acting Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court and former chairperson of the National Commission for Backward Classes, welcomed the decision to conduct a caste census.

He said the BJP government was compelled to take the decision after the Telangana Assembly passed a bill to provide 42 per cent reservation to OBCs, 18 per cent to SCs and 10 per cent to STs in urban local bodies, state government jobs and state government-run educational institutions.

“The Telangana government has passed a bill to increase the quota matrix. This has mounted pressure on the BJP as it fears a shift in the OBC vote share in favour of the Opposition parties. But the government must give a timeline for the census. The government must ensure that the reservation/representation increases for all sections to match their population share,” Eswaraiah said.

Ashok Bharati, chairman of the National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations, said the caste census must be conducted in a transparent manner without repeating the mistakes of 2011-12.

The first caste enumeration in independent India was conducted in 2011. The data was not released by the government because of concerns over accuracy.