Members of Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-nomadic Tribe (DNT) communities have approached the Supreme Court of India, seeking directions that their communities be enumerated distinctly in the 2027 Census with a specific question for this in the forms. The petitioners have pointed out that since the formation of the Republic, their communities have never been counted in any of the Censuses, arguing that the absence of this data has led to community members being unable to avail government benefits and other affirmative action in their “collective interest”.
The petitioners, led by Dakxinkumar Bajrange, a DNT community leader in Gujarat, have sought specific directions from the court to the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India to include a specific question on the DNTs in both phases of the 2027 Census, which are the houselisting phase and the population enumeration phase.
The 2027 Census is to be conducted from 2026 to 2027 and comes 16 years after the last Census was conducted in 2011. This will be the first Census in independent India set to enumerate castes. The houselisting phase of the Census is scheduled to begin on April 1, and the questions for this phase were notified in January this year.
