New Delhi: Asserting caste census is a legitimate demand and the need of the hour, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday said it is pro-development and will help the policymakers frame targeted welfare policies for the backward castes.
Talking to the media in the national capital, Kumar said it is pro-development and will help the policymakers frame targeted welfare policies for the backward castes.
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"Caste census must take place. We will hold an all-party meeting over this matter in Bihar,” he added, ANI reported.
The Bihar Chief Minister’s remarks came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has effectively ruled out a caste census in 2021.
The Central government has told the Supreme Court that such an exercise “would not be feasible”, adding that “exclusion of information regarding any other caste” apart from SCs and STs “from the purview of census is a conscious policy decision”.
In an affidavit filed in the top court, the Centre reasoned that even when the census of castes was taken in the pre-Independence period, the data suffered in respect of “completeness and accuracy”.
The Centre said the caste data enumerated in the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 is “unusable” for official purposes as they are “replete with technical flaws”, PTI reported.
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment made the submission in an affidavit in response to a plea by the Maharashtra government seeking a direction to the Centre and other concerned authorities to disclose to the state the SECC 2011 raw caste data of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) which is not made available to them on “repeated demand”.