Government opts for enumeration of castes other than SC/ST
09 Sep 2010
The union cabinet has decided to hold a separate enumeration of the various castes in the country other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The caste enumeration will be conducted as a separate exercise beginning June 2011 and completed in a phased manner by September 2011 after the completion of the population enumeration phase (to be conducted in February-March 2011) of the Census 2011 is over, an official release said today .
The government proposes to formulate a suitable legal regime for collection of data on castes in consultation with the ministry of law and justice.
The office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner would conduct the field operations of the caste enumeration.
The government proposes to constitute an expert group to classify the caste/tribe returns after the enumeration is completed by the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner.
The government had given up caste-wise enumeration as a matter of policy after independence. The last time when caste-wise data was collected, tabulated and published in detail was during the 1931 census.
The decision was taken in response to the demands for enumerating castes other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Census 2011 raised inside Parliament as well as by various groups outside.
