Caste Census in Telangana in July
53-point questionnaire prepared by state BC Commission
The Congress government in Telangana will hold the promised Caste Census in the state in July. Officials said on Wednesday that the Telangana State Commission for Backward Classes would submit a report to the government by this month-end on the modalities to be adopted for the door-to-door exercise.
Notably, during the Assembly election campaign in the state in 2023, the Congress had promised to undertake this exercise if it was voted into power. A month after the Congress won power on December 7, 2023, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy announced that his government would soon hold the Caste Census.
On February 5, he held a Cabinet meeting in which the proposal for the Caste Census was approved unanimously. The Cabinet approved the release of `150 crore for this purpose.
Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka introduced a resolution on the Caste Census in the Assembly on February 17. After a long debate in which all sides including the opposition participated, the Assembly unanimously approved a resolution for door-to-door Caste Census covering all communities including the Muslims.
Thereafter, the Chief Minister asked the state BC Commission to draft the modalities and questionnaire for this purpose and ensure that the process does not run into legal hurdles. He asked the commission to study the methods adopted by states like Bihar and Karnataka for their caste census exercises, the factors that led to legal hurdles and what preventive steps could be taken to avoid such a situation in Telangana.
The BC Commission went through the questionnaires finalised by Karnataka and Bihar pertaining to the socio-economic and educational conditions of all castes and the issue of ‘which questions in the survey encountered legal problems later.’
It is learnt that the state BC Commission has finalised a questionnaire for the door-to-door caste census with 53 questions on the socio-economic and educational conditions of all castes including the minorities.
The Commission sought the assistance of CESS (Centre for Economic and Social Studies), ASCI (Administrative Staff College of India), CGG (Centre for Good Governance), and the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES), which have expertise in conducting such surveys.