OBC Outfits Demand Postponement of Caste Census Until Standardised Coding Is Finalised
Dr Kiran Kumar said the organisations would start a protest in New Delhi against what they described as injustice to OBCs in Census 2027.
Hyderabad: Backward classes community organisations on Friday demanded that caste enumeration under Census 2027 be postponed until the Centre finalised standardised codes for the OBC communities. The BC Intellectuals Forum, All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) and other OBC organisations warned that an open caste column could produce inconsistent data, and said they would take their protest to New Delhi.
The demand came during a press meet and interaction with OBC organisations here, attended by political analyst and social scientist Prof. Yogendra Yadav. He said simply collecting caste names would not be enough. Different spellings, synonyms, regional names and sub-castes would be recorded separately if there is no common coding system, he said, making the data difficult to classify and use.
“Caste enumeration must produce reliable, standardised and usable data for social justice, representation, reservations and evidence-based policymaking,” Prof. Yadav said.
Dr Kiran Kumar said the organisations would start a protest in New Delhi against what they described as injustice to OBCs in Census 2027.
The groups also added that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes communities already follow a recognised system during enumeration and sought a similar process for OBCs. They further referred to SECC 2011, saying the exercise produced a large number of caste entries and classification problems.
Their demands include separate codes covering recognised caste names, synonyms, alternative names and regional variations, along with provisions for omitted communities and verification of entries. They also sought a committee of OBC scholars, sociologists, statisticians, administrators and representatives of OBC organisations before caste enumeration begins.
