Three Indian states -- Bihar, Maharashtra and Odisha -- and a few organisations have requested to collect caste details in the forthcoming census, the Lok Sabha or Lower House of the Indian parliament was informed on Tuesday (12).
The country's junior home minister Nityanand Rai also said the Narendra Modi government at New Delhi has not enumerated caste-wise population other than Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in census since Independence.
"Three state governments, namely, Bihar, Maharashtra and Odisha and a few organisations have requested to collect caste details in the forthcoming census," he said in a written reply to a question.
Rai said in census, the castes and tribes which are specifically notified as SCs and STs according to the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 and the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950, as amended from time to time, are enumerated.
He said the intent of the government for conducting Census 2021 was notified in Gazette of India on March 28, 2019.
However, due to outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, the conduct of Census 2021 and the related field activities have been postponed until further orders.
The minister said in census, data is collected on demographic and various socioeconomic parameters like education, SC and ST, religion, language, marriage, fertility, disability, occupation and migration of the individuals.
The questionnaire for the first phase of census was notified in the Gazette of India, he said. Rai said the forthcoming census is to be the first digital census and there is a provision for self-enumeration.
A mobile app for collection of data and a census portal for management and monitoring of various census-related activities have been developed.
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