The Census 2027 questionnaire seeking details about the respondents’ parents, spouses and number of bank accounts requires justification from the Union government, said a group of former bureaucrats on Wednesday.Such information should not be gathered “merely because it can be collected”, the Constitutional Conduct Group pointed out.The questionnaire for the 2027 enumeration exercise includes 12 questions that were not asked in the previous census. These include questions seeking parents’ names, spouses’ names, permanent residential addresses, their nationality, the place where they got their Covid-19 vaccine, number of bank accounts, mobile phone, and details of Aadhaar, voter ID, passport and driving licence.“Much of this information appears to have little relevance for generating population statistics or informing public policy,” said the group of retired bureaucrats in an open letter.They also pointed out that some of the newly introduced questions, particularly those seeking details about the respondents’ religion and the place of birth of both parents, “could facilitate preparation or updating of the National Population Register, which in turn is associated with the proposed National Register of Citizens”.The National Population Register is a list of all the usual residents of India. The National Register of Citizens is an exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.Critics fear that the NRC, when used in conjunction with the Citizenship Amendment Act, will allow the government to force many Muslims to prove their citizenship. The government and its supporters insist that the CAA and the NRC are not linked.In their letter, the bureaucrats said that they did not oppose the preparation of a register of citizens. However, the exercise must be undertaken “transparently, through an explicitly defined process, and not by using the census as a surrogate mechanism”, they said.The retired bureaucrats also said that the collection of census data should be driven by the statistical outputs it is intended to produce. They added that the census exercise should not create opportunities for profiling communities or individuals.“The question asking for the name of a spouse is especially intrusive,” they wrote. “The government may have statutory authority to ask questions under the census framework, but citizens retain constitutional protections of individual liberty and privacy.”They also raised concerns about the enumerators asking open-ended questions to record caste details of the respondents.They said the questionnaire does not provide a reliable means of establishing the numbers of Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic communities. The ex-bureaucrats pointed out that their identities cut across Schedules Castes, Schedules Tribes and Other Backward Classes classifications.In the Census 2027, surveyors will ask respondents if they belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and will also include an open-ended question for other communities about the caste that they belong to.This will be the first time in independent India that caste will be enumerated across communities. Until now, the census only recorded the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.India had last conducted an exercise to count the population of all caste groups in 1931.The 108 signatories to the letter include Punjab’s former Director General of Police Julio Ribeiro, Delhi’s former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, former Indian ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and former Indian Administrative Service officer and activist Harsh Mander.Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.Also read: ‘Planned failure’: Is the Modi government sabotaging its own caste census?Is Census 2027 the first step to a National Register of Citizens?