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NEW DELHI: The Centre Thursday told the Supreme Court it has decided not to enumerate Other Backward Castes as part of the 2021 Census as taking a headcount of castes other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be administratively extremely complex and cannot yield complete or accurate information.
Opposing the Maharashtra government’s plea for a directive to it to count OBCs in the state, the Centre also said the raw data on the number of OBCs, collected under the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), was technically flawed, unreliable and unusable for any purpose, including quantifying quota in jobs, admissions to educational institutions or elections, and hence it has been decided not to make it official.
It said preparation for conducting the Census is at an advanced stage and no change in the criteria is possible now.
On counting OBCs as part of the fresh Census, which was scheduled to begin in 2021 but delayed because of the pandemic, the Centre said it decided not to hold ‘OBC Census’ as part of the larger decennial enumeration of the population.
“Any direction from the SC to carry out OBC caste enumeration at this late stage would cause confusion and would also tantamount to interfering with the policy decision of the government which has decided not to carry out OBC caste enumeration in Census 2021,” it said in an affidavit. The categorical stand comes against the backdrop of the demand from OBC leaders, including BJP ally and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar as well as BJP’s own like Sushil Kumar Modi, to count backward castes and their numerical strength.
Due to the mistakes committed by enumerators, the Centre said, the enumeration of OBCs/BCCs has always been adjudged to be administratively extremely complex. Even when the censuses of castes were taken in the pre-Independence period, the data suffered in respect of completeness and accuracy,” it said.
It backed its stand by pointing to the incurable flaws that crept into the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census, a euphemism for the OBC count. “Due to the mistakes committed by enumerators, inherent flaws in the manner of conducting the Census and several such factors, there is no reliable or dependable caste-based Census data available which can be the basis of any constitutional or statutory exercises like reservations in admission, promotion or local body elections,” the Centre said.
The Centre said the flaws were glaring from the simple statistics that in the 1931 Census, the total number of castes enumerated were just 4,147 but in the 2011 SECC, these were more than 46 lakh. “Assuming that some castes may bifurcate into sub-castes, the total number cannot be exponentially high to this extent,” it said. “SECC 2011 data suffer from infirmities making it unusable for any official purposes and cannot be mentioned as any official document,” it said and informed the court that Census 2021, preparations for which are in the final stages, would collect data on SCs and STs and not on enumeration of OBCs.
Referring to Maharashtra’s writ petition in the SC demanding publishing of 2011 raw data, the Centre said if made public, the data, fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies, would cause huge problems for the state government.
“Analysis of SECC data pertaining to Maharashtra showed that out of a total population of 10.3 crore, a population of 1.17 crore recorded ‘no caste’, but the rest of the population categorised themselves into 4.28 lakh different castes. In contrast, the existing castes published in Maharashtra in SCs, STs and OBC categories are only 494,” the Centre said.
The published list included 47 castes among STs, 59 castes in SCs and 388 among OBCs. “Considering this, it is apparent that the caste enumeration in SECC 2011 was fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies. A further analysis showed more than 99% of the castes enumerated had a population of less than 100 persons,” it said, adding that 2,440 castes accounted for the country’s 8.82 crore population while 4,26,237 castes cumulatively had 0.54 crore citizens. “For the aforesaid reason, the details available in the record of the census pertaining to castes is not reliable either for the purpose of any reservation, whether in admission, employment or elections to local bodies.”
Opposing the Maharashtra government’s plea for a directive to it to count OBCs in the state, the Centre also said the raw data on the number of OBCs, collected under the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), was technically flawed, unreliable and unusable for any purpose, including quantifying quota in jobs, admissions to educational institutions or elections, and hence it has been decided not to make it official.
It said preparation for conducting the Census is at an advanced stage and no change in the criteria is possible now.
On counting OBCs as part of the fresh Census, which was scheduled to begin in 2021 but delayed because of the pandemic, the Centre said it decided not to hold ‘OBC Census’ as part of the larger decennial enumeration of the population.
“Any direction from the SC to carry out OBC caste enumeration at this late stage would cause confusion and would also tantamount to interfering with the policy decision of the government which has decided not to carry out OBC caste enumeration in Census 2021,” it said in an affidavit. The categorical stand comes against the backdrop of the demand from OBC leaders, including BJP ally and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar as well as BJP’s own like Sushil Kumar Modi, to count backward castes and their numerical strength.
Due to the mistakes committed by enumerators, the Centre said, the enumeration of OBCs/BCCs has always been adjudged to be administratively extremely complex. Even when the censuses of castes were taken in the pre-Independence period, the data suffered in respect of completeness and accuracy,” it said.
It backed its stand by pointing to the incurable flaws that crept into the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census, a euphemism for the OBC count. “Due to the mistakes committed by enumerators, inherent flaws in the manner of conducting the Census and several such factors, there is no reliable or dependable caste-based Census data available which can be the basis of any constitutional or statutory exercises like reservations in admission, promotion or local body elections,” the Centre said.
The Centre said the flaws were glaring from the simple statistics that in the 1931 Census, the total number of castes enumerated were just 4,147 but in the 2011 SECC, these were more than 46 lakh. “Assuming that some castes may bifurcate into sub-castes, the total number cannot be exponentially high to this extent,” it said. “SECC 2011 data suffer from infirmities making it unusable for any official purposes and cannot be mentioned as any official document,” it said and informed the court that Census 2021, preparations for which are in the final stages, would collect data on SCs and STs and not on enumeration of OBCs.
Referring to Maharashtra’s writ petition in the SC demanding publishing of 2011 raw data, the Centre said if made public, the data, fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies, would cause huge problems for the state government.
“Analysis of SECC data pertaining to Maharashtra showed that out of a total population of 10.3 crore, a population of 1.17 crore recorded ‘no caste’, but the rest of the population categorised themselves into 4.28 lakh different castes. In contrast, the existing castes published in Maharashtra in SCs, STs and OBC categories are only 494,” the Centre said.
The published list included 47 castes among STs, 59 castes in SCs and 388 among OBCs. “Considering this, it is apparent that the caste enumeration in SECC 2011 was fraught with mistakes and inaccuracies. A further analysis showed more than 99% of the castes enumerated had a population of less than 100 persons,” it said, adding that 2,440 castes accounted for the country’s 8.82 crore population while 4,26,237 castes cumulatively had 0.54 crore citizens. “For the aforesaid reason, the details available in the record of the census pertaining to castes is not reliable either for the purpose of any reservation, whether in admission, employment or elections to local bodies.”
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