Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 13: The Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday that three state governments Bihar, Maharashtra, and Odisha as well as a few organisations have asked for caste information to be gathered during the upcoming census.
Nityanand Rai, Union Minister of State for Home, added that the central government has not counted people by caste other than SCs and STs in censuses since independence.
“Three state governments, namely, Bihar, Maharashtra and Odisha and a few organisations have requested to collect caste details in the forthcoming census,” he said in a written reply to a question.
Rai said in the census, the castes and tribes which are specifically notified as Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) according to the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 and the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950, as amended from time to time, are enumerated.
He claimed that on March 28, 2019, the administration announced its intention to conduct the Census in 2021. The implementation of Census 2021 and the associated field activities, however, have been delayed until further orders as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the minister, census data is gathered on a variety of socioeconomic and demographic factors, including education, SC and ST, religion, language, marriage, fertility, handicap, occupation, and movement of the population.
According to him, the Indian Gazette published a notice about the first phase of the census questionnaire.
The upcoming census, according to Rai, will be the first digital census and will allow for self-enumeration. In order to handle and track the numerous census-related operations, a mobile app for data collection and a census portal have been created.
