The last Census of India was conducted in 2011 in two phases. The 2027 exercise will be the first digital Census.
| Photo Credit: AP
The argument that Other Backward Classes (OBC) lists cannot be used for caste enumeration because they list “classes, not castes” is “fundamentally flawed”, associations representing the interests of OBC communities said on Friday (September 4, 2026), a day after The Hindu reported that this was part of the rationale for the Union government to not draw caste names and codify them from the readily available Central and State OBC lists for the caste enumeration component of the 2027 Census.The OBC groups have said that if existing OBC lists were inadequate or had inconsistencies for the purpose of caste enumeration, the government should ideally use experts to draw and rationalise the caste names from these lists and not “drop them altogether”.The government’s justification for not relying on the OBC lists came even as associations representing these communities and senior Opposition leaders such as Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have questioned the utility of using the “open-column” methodology to enumerate all castes apart from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. One of the principal arguments that has historically driven the demand for a caste Census has been the need to enumerate the population of OBCs across the country, a figure that has only been estimated in India so far, based on the caste Census data from 1931.On Friday, the All India OBC Students’ Association said, “If the Government recognises these communities as OBCs for reservation and other affirmative-action measures, it cannot suddenly disregard their caste identities when it comes to collecting population data… The purpose of a Census is to accurately capture the social realities of India, not to avoid caste enumeration on the basis of an artificial distinction between ‘class’ and ‘caste’.”V. Srinivas Goud, who is a former Minister in the Telangana Government, a leader of the TRS, and the National Chairperson of the OBC Public Representatives Forum, added that such justifications from the Union government add to the perception that they had agreed to enumerate castes with no “real intention” of doing it properly.T. Chiranjeevulu, a retired IAS officer and the Chairman of the Backwards Classes Intellectual Forum, also concurred, arguing that the Government’s refusal to codify all existing caste names and enumerate the populations of caste groups (as they usually do for SCs and STs) was intended to “cover up the misdeeds” of the justification they had used for bringing in the Economically Weaker Section reservations.“We know that when EWS was introduced, the government tried to estimate that the non-SC/ST/OBC population was about 35%-40%. This government knows that if OBC populations are enumerated scientifically as part of a rigorous caste Census, their initial idea of the EWS population would prove to be an overestimation, and that is why they are not sincere about the caste enumeration in the 2027 Census,” Mr. Chiranjeevulu told The Hindu.In their statement countering the argument of the government on why it did not use the OBC lists for the 2027 Census exercise, the AIOBCSA said this logic becomes “even more questionable when certificates and official records routinely identify communities by their specific social and caste identities. Even EWS certificates identify the beneficiary through prescribed social/category criteria, demonstrating that administrative classification and social identity can coexist”.Further, the AIOBCSA added, “If the existing OBC lists are considered inadequate or contain inconsistencies, the answer is not to drop them altogether. The Government should undertake proper consultation, standardise nomenclature, assign unique codes to castes/communities, and ensure that every caste is accurately enumerated.”Representatives of the AIOBCSA, led by national president G. Kiran Kumar, had earlier this week also met with Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and discussed several issues affecting OBC communities in India, including the issue of the way the Government is proceeding with its caste enumeration methodology. Published - September 04, 2026 07:47 pm IST
