Did BJP make a U-turn? Congress raises a caste alarm in Census 2027

The Congress has launched an attack on the BJP-led central government, alleging it was trying to undercount the number of the OBC population. It is trying to corner the NDA government through the latter’s argument on the validity of the 2011 caste census. SC and OBC groups have raised concerns too.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh has accused the Narendra Modi government of doing a U-turn on the 2027 caste census. (File images)

India is preparing to count caste as part of the decadal Census nationally after decades, but a battle has already begun with the Opposition asking if the process is foolproof. The Congress party has questioned the way castes will be recorded in Census 2027, particularly the decision to use an open-ended question rather than a prepared list or drop-down menu of castes. The party alleges that there is a “deep conspiracy” to undercount the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

To mount the ‘caste’ attack on the Narendra Modi-led Centre, the Congress has used the Union government’s own assessment of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 data to question the Census 2027. The Congress also accused the Modi government of “deliberately excluding the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category from the Census 2027 questionnaire”, which it said, was a “deep conspiracy” to keep the community’s actual population in the dark.

In a 2021 affidavit before the Supreme Court, the Centre said a caste registry and drop-down menu could have made the data more consistent. Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh has now asked why Census 2027 does not use a system the government itself had called “ideal”. He has also pointed to Bihar and Telangana, where predefined caste lists and codes were used, and warned that an open-ended question could again produce unreliable caste data.

Bihar and Telangana used predefined caste lists and codes in their caste surveys to make the counting more accurate.

Also, the concern over the accuracy of the caste count isn’t Congress’s alone.

The All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) has also criticised retaining an open-ended caste column. Meanwhile, the Mandal Army’s national president, Aniruddh Singh Vidrohi, has called for a National Caste Master Registry, standard codes and a system to map different spellings and local names of the same caste. Activist Yogendra Yadav had also warned against repeating the open-ended approach used in the SECC 2011.

This debate comes at a consequential moment when Census 2027 is set to enumerate castes beyond Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes nationally for the first time in independent India. The Census question has also landed at a time when competing narratives over caste and reservation have returned to the streets and social media.

The row comes months before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, with parties already gearing up for the contest.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who has moved to woo the 8% Brahmins of Uttar Pradesh, has promised a caste census within three months if an SP government came to power. The Samajwadi Party is a part of the Congress-led INDIA bloc, and they together won 43 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state (out of 80 seats). It was an increase of 37 seats.

THE CASTE QUESTION AT THE HEART OF THE CENSUS 2027 ROW

On August 14, the Centre notified the 40 questions for the second Population Enumeration phase of Census 2027, when details about every individual, including caste, will be collected. Item 10 is “Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Caste”, which would be open-ended, The Hindu reported, adding that the enumerator will record the caste or sub-caste as declared by the respondent.

The format was retained after a pre-test conducted in July across 16 states and Union Territories, according to a report in The New Indian Express.

“A nationwide pre-test for phase-I covering around 5,000 census blocks was conducted in November 2025 to validate the methodology, digital tools and training systems,” according to a backgrounder by the Press Information Bureau.

That sounds straightforward. But India has thousands of castes and sub-castes, whose names can change with region, language, spelling and local usage. The challenge, therefore, is ensuring that different names referring to the same social group are ultimately identified and coded together.

This is precisely where Congress has raised objections.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh has alleged that the “methodology of asking Qs on caste in Census 2027 is deliberately flawed.”

Earlier, in a post on X, he had said it had been widely expected that enumerators would carry a pre-prepared, state-wise caste list, as was done during caste surveys in Bihar and Telangana, and simply mark the appropriate response. The absence of such a list, he said, raised “serious doubts” over the government’s intent, said Ramesh, a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka.

The Congress also accused the Modi government of deliberately excluding the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category from the census questionnaire. It alleged that the omission was part of a “deep conspiracy” to keep the community’s actual population out of official data.

By and large, the BJP has been able to garner the support of the OBC voters in the recent elections.

Congress’s criticism is political, but the question it has raised is not new. The Centre itself had flagged similar problems with caste data in the past.

WHAT MODI GOVT SAID IN 2021 ON 2011 CASTE CENSUS

On September 21, 2021, the Union government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court while opposing a plea concerning the release and use of caste data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. News agency PTI in 2021 reported that the caste enumeration in SECC 2011 was “fraught” with mistakes and inaccuracies.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said, “The caste data has not been disclosed and has been kept with the Office of the Registrar General, India (ORGI) for various reasons, but primarily for the technical flaws that were noticed in the raw caste/tribe SECC data, which makes it unusable as explained hereinafter”.

Jairam Ramesh has now highlighted Paragraph 12(d) of that 2021 affidavit.

“There was no registry of caste prepared prior to the conduct of the 2011 Census. It would have been ideal for the Registry of Castes that there should have been given a drop-down menu for selection of the castes which could have made some consistent data available which can be relied upon,” the passage quoted by Ramesh said.

That has allowed Congress to turn the government’s earlier reasoning into its main question for Census 2027.

“The question now is this: why does Census 2027 NOT have this drop-down menu that the Modi Government recommended in the affidavit it submitted to the Supreme Court in Sept 2021?” Ramesh asked.

The Congress’ Rajya Sabha MP, Syed Naseer Hussain, taking to X, said, “The Modi government opposed a caste census, then yielded to the pressure from the people of India and made a U-turn. Now, by failing to put in place even the basic mechanisms needed for credible caste enumeration, it appears to be retreating from that commitment yet again. The Congress party stands firm on the demand for a genuine, comprehensive and scientifically conducted caste census.”

Jairam Ramesh has noted that caste menus had been prepared for the Bihar and Telangana surveys and said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had also suggested such an approach in his May 5, 2025 letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Centre’s 2021 affidavit is important because SECC 2011 demonstrated the difficulty of processing unrestricted responses on caste. Different spellings, surnames, sub-castes and local descriptions could produce multiple entries that then needed to be classified and reconciled.

Highlighting that the method of recording and coding caste might not be strong or transparent enough in the Census 2027, Aniruddh Singh Vidrohi of the Mandal Army highlighted an example, which he said the Centre gave in its 2021 position, the “Mappilas” community.

THE MAPPILAS PROBLEM IN CENSUS 2027

In a detailed post on X, Mandal Army’s Vidrohi said that the Union government had pointed before the Supreme Court to technical shortcomings in the 2011 caste data, including how names such as “Mappilas” could be recorded in different forms. It caused entries belonging to the same community to become fragmented. That gets to the fundamental problem.

If one community is entered under different spellings, local names or subgroup descriptions, an open text field can generate multiple raw entries. Unless a robust coding system later maps them correctly to the same category, the raw count does not automatically translate into reliable caste-wise data.

Vidrohi, therefore, argued that only counting caste was not enough. “The caste census is happening. The question now is, how will castes be counted accurately?” he said on X.

He has demanded a “National Caste Master Registry”, a “Standard Caste Code” for every caste, scientific mapping of local names, synonyms and spelling variations, a clear methodology for OBC/SEBC classification and separate recording of “Other”, “Unmatched”, “Refused” and “No Caste”. He has also sought a verification mechanism for erroneous coding and an independent Data Quality Audit.

WHY CASTE SURVEY OF TELANGANA AND BIHAR KEEP COMING UP?

The alternative model that the Congress is suggesting to document and count castes of Indians is not a theory on paper. Jairam Ramesh has repeatedly invoked Bihar and Telangana, where caste surveys used predefined lists rather than relying entirely on unrestricted caste descriptions. Congress has particularly pushed the Telangana model, arguing that the Centre should have drawn from both its questionnaire and methodology.

Vidrohi similarly noted that Bihar’s caste survey used a predefined caste list and codes, while Telangana’s Socio-Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste survey used caste lists, codes, alternate names and validation mechanisms. The Telangana caste survey was conducted by the Congress government of CM A Revanth Reddy in 2024, and its findings were presented in February 2025.

“So why shouldn’t we adopt the strongest and most scientific system at the national level?” Vidrohi asked.

The All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA), in a statement on X, highlighted that an open-ended caste column created hurdles in SECC 201, and criticised the NDA government for retaining an open-ended column for Census 2027.

“Manuvadis in political and bureaucratic circles during the UPA regime created hurdles in the SECC 2011 by deliberately keeping the Caste Column open-ended… Manuvadis in political and bureaucratic circles under the NDA regime are once again creating obstacles in Census 2027 by retaining an open-ended Caste Column,” the All India OBC Students Association said in the statement on X.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/congress-caste-question-census-2027-open-ended-column-row-jairam-ramesh-obc-mandal-army-2974706-2026-08-20