New Delhi, August 25, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, raising concerns over the proposed open-ended format for recording caste details in the upcoming census and urging the government to introduce a drop-down list of castes.
The Congress leaders argued that accurate caste data is essential for framing social justice policies and assessing the population and socio-economic conditions of different communities. They warned that allowing respondents to enter caste names without a standardised list could result in the same caste being recorded under different names, spellings, sub-castes or regional variations.
“Your government has opted for an ‘open-ended’ question format to record caste details during the census, an approach that is misleading,” Kharge and Gandhi said in their letter.
They claimed that such a system could fragment a single caste into numerous entries and make the resulting dataset difficult to use for determining the actual population of backward, extremely backward and other marginalised communities. They also expressed concern that the absence of a specific OBC category could make it difficult to accurately determine the size of the Other Backward Classes population.
The Congress leaders proposed a standardised drop-down list of castes, similar to the approach used for enumerating Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. They said the list could be prepared using existing government records, including lists of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, along with data from the Anthropological Survey of India.
They also cited caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar as examples and attached caste lists from both exercises for reference.
Kharge and Gandhi called for the existing questionnaire to be withdrawn and a new one prepared after consultations with political parties, experts and the public.
The Centre had approved the inclusion of caste enumeration in the upcoming census in April 2025, making it part of the main census rather than a separate exercise.
The Congress has previously raised similar concerns over the absence of a caste drop-down menu in the Census 2027 questionnaire.
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