NEW DELHI — Congress leader Pawan Khera on Tuesday raised fresh doubts over the Centre’s promise of conducting caste enumeration along with the population Census, starting March 1, 2027, asking why the official gazette notification issued for the 16th Census missed the very important caste clause.
Pawan Khera speaking to IANS said that it is natural to doubt government’s intentions and motive on a caste survey because there is not a single mention of the word ‘caste’ in the notification.
The Centre issued a gazette notification on Monday, unveiling a two-phased population Census – first in October 2026 and then in 2027.
Khera, the Chairman of the Congress’ media and publicity department, claimed that the ruling BJP has been perennially opposed to the idea of social justice and equitable representation of all communities including the Backwards and SCs and STs and hence it only makes one suspicious of their hidden motive.
“The first step is to collect data and conduct a detailed survey of the Backward and marginalised communities. Unless there is data pool with details of their economic and social status, no welfare policy can be framed and implemented,” he said.
He said, “The BJP government has always resisted caste-based reservations, and it was only after constant pressure from Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party that they agreed for caste enumeration along with the population census, however, there are still enough reasons to doubt the motive of this dispensation.”
Earlier in the day, the Congress spokesperson also compared the notification of the Telangana caste survey with that of the Centre and highlighted how the latter’s documents had no mention of caste census while the state government stressed on ‘caste’ not once but thrice.
The fresh allegations by the Congress leader come on the back of the Centre fact-checking claims and conjectures on social media about caste enumeration being left out of the Census.
PIB, the government’s nodal agency for disseminating information rejected claims that caste enumeration will not be included in the Census and urged people not to pay heed to unverified online content. –IANS
