Chennai, Sep 6 (IANS) DMK President and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Sunday urged the Union government to revise the proposed method for collecting caste information during Census 2027, warning that an open-ended system could produce unreliable data and defeat the purpose of the exercise.
Stalin objected to the plan that would allow enumerators to manually enter caste names without choosing them from a standardised list, contending that variations in spelling, local terminology and the classification of communities could create inconsistencies on a massive scale.
He asked the Centre to hold consultations with state governments and collect their official lists of Backward Classes and Most Backward Classes, and these categories should be incorporated into the census software through a predetermined selection system to ensure uniformity and accuracy across the country.
The DMK leader also called on the Tamil Nadu government to adopt a special resolution during the ongoing Assembly session. Such a resolution, he said, would convey the concerns of the state’s people and increase pressure on the Centre to introduce an error-free enumeration process.
Stalin rejected the Union government’s explanation that the Other Backward Classes list consists of classes rather than individual castes. He maintained that citizens should be allowed to select their community from an established list instead of relying on unrestricted entries recorded by enumerators.
According to him, an open-ended format could result in numerous duplicate or incorrect classifications. He referred to past claims suggesting that unstructured data collection had falsely indicated the existence of as many as 46 lakh separate castes across India.
Noting that the principal aim of collecting caste data is to establish the population strength and assess the social, economic and educational position of OBC communities, similar to the information gathered for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, he said that accurate figures would help the Union and state governments design reservation policies, welfare programmes and development initiatives based on measurable deprivation and representation.
Stalin warned that proceeding with what he described as a defective methodology could waste nearly Rs 12,000 crore in public money, apart from the extensive labour of lakhs of government employees involved in the nationwide exercise. He said immediate corrections were necessary to protect the social justice entitlements of millions belonging to backward and most backward communities. A transparent and standardised system, he added, was essential for producing credible caste data and ensuring that the 2027 census serves its intended policy purpose.
–IANS
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