Backward Classes group raises concern over challenges to caste census

The National BC Dal has expressed serious concern the central challenge in the Centre’s proposed caste census on how a single social community known by different names across regions, States and linguistic contexts would be eventually be counted as one.

He said caste enumeration could not be treated as a mere exercise in collecting names, as every individual response would eventually become part of a larger national statistical record with potential implications for understanding the country’s social composition and informing public policy.

“If members of the same community were recorded under multiple names and those entries were not scientifically linked and consolidated, the resulting data could fragment the numerical representation of that community,” he cautioned.

Mr. Kumarsawamy called for a transparent and technically robust framework to address regional variations, sub-caste identities and linguistic differences, with clear standards for classification and aggregation. “If one community is scattered across the census under a hundred different names, what may be lost is not merely a number, but the community’s collective identity in the official record,” he said.