Modi urged to amend Census Act for effective caste enumeration

HYDERABAD
Telangana BC Commission former chairman Vakulabharanam Krishna Mohan Rao has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate necessary legislative and procedural reforms to ensure the success of the caste census.
In an open letter to the Prime Minister on Saturday, Mr. Rao hailed the Centre's decision to include caste enumeration in the next census but pointed out legal shortcomings in the current Census Act of 1948 regarding caste surveys.
'The Census Act, 1948, empowers the central government to conduct the census, but it lacks clarity on the enumeration of specific castes,' he said. Since 1951, only Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) have been enumerated, with no clear legal authority to count other castes, he added.
Mr. Rao cited the Socio-Economic and Caste Census in 2011, conducted by the Ministries of Rural Development and Urban Development, which lacked statutory backing, proper classification, and faced data inaccuracies.
'Consequently, the data failed legal scrutiny and was rendered ineffective for policy decisions, resulting in the wastage of significant public funds and effort,' he noted.
To avoid similar issues, Mr. Rao underscored the need for explicit legal authority in the Census Act for collecting data on non-SC/ST castes. He suggested several amendments, including, data protection measures to comply with the Right to Privacy judgment (Puttaswamy, 2017), legal stability in line with IR Coelho (2007), statistical data aligning with the principles laid down in Indra Sawhney (1992) to substantiate backwardness, compliance with the Triple Test outlined in Vikas Gawali (2021), and data collection adhering to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023.
Mr. Rao stressed that caste census must be followed by statutory reforms.

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