Census: Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge urge PM Modi to cancel current caste questionnaire

Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to scrap the current caste census questionnaire and prepare a new one based on a verified list of castes.

In the letter, Kharge, the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and Gandhi, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, said the government had chosen an open-ended question to record caste details, which they described as misleading. “We do not accept the caste census being conducted in this manner,” they said.

They argued that the open-ended question could result in the same caste being recorded under different names, sub-castes and with regional variations.

“A correct assessment of the numbers and socio-economic status of various castes is possible only if the caste enumeration is conducted properly,” they said.

They said that the current methodology could fragment the data and make it difficult to accurately determine the population and socio-economic status of communities.

The Congress leaders further highlighted that this would particularly disadvantage “backward, extremely backward, and other deprived communities”, and would also impact decisions related to education, employment, welfare schemes and social justice.

Further, the leaders pointed out that the questionnaire did not include the term “backward class”, which would make it impossible to determine the size...

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