Census 2027: Congress questions absence of OBC option and caste ‘drop-down’ menu, cites Centre’s own 2021 affidavit

New Delhi: The Congress has questioned the methodology for caste enumeration in Census 2027 after the Centre’s latest household questionnaire did not separately mention the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category under the caste-related question. The party has also raised questions over the absence of a standardised caste “drop-down” menu, arguing that an open-ended system could result in multiple spellings, regional names and synonyms for the same caste being recorded separately, potentially making the final data difficult to classify and use for policy. The issue was raised by Congress OBC Department chairman Anil Jai Hind, while Congress MP Jairam Ramesh separately pointed to a 2021 affidavit in which the Union government itself had said that a drop-down menu for caste selection would have helped produce consistent and reliable data.

What does the Census questionnaire say?

The Ministry of Home Affairs, through the Office of the Registrar General, issued a notification on August 14, 2026, listing the questions to be asked through the household schedule for Census 2027. The document contains 40 questions covering demographic, social, educational, economic and migration-related information.

Question 10 deals with social identity and is worded as “Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Caste.” While SC and ST are specifically mentioned, the questionnaire does not separately identify “OBC” as an option under this question.

The distinction has become politically significant because the forthcoming census is expected to enumerate caste across communities. The government announced in April 2025 that caste enumeration would be included in the forthcoming census, making it the first nationwide census since 1931 to collect caste information across communities rather than limiting caste enumeration to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The Congress has interpreted the absence of an explicitly identified OBC option as a serious methodological concern. However, the notification itself does not state that OBC respondents will be excluded from answering the general “Caste” question. The central issue raised by the party is therefore not simply whether OBC respondents can state their caste, but how those responses will be recorded, standardised and subsequently classified.

Anil Jai Hind calls omission a “deep conspiracy”

Addressing a press conference, Anil Jai Hind argued that the use of a general, open-ended caste question instead of a structured classification system could create large-scale inconsistencies in the data.

“The OBC category in this questionnaire being absent is a very big thing,” Jai Hind said, referring to the August 14 notification. He argued that an enumerator entering a household would simply ask the respondent what their caste was, after which the answer would be recorded in an open-ended format.

According to Jai Hind, this could produce a large number of entries for the same caste because communities are known by different names in different regions. He said the resulting database could become difficult to consolidate and could ultimately fail to provide a scientifically reliable picture of the population of different OBC communities.

He alleged that the absence of a standardised system was not an accidental omission but part of what he described as a “deep conspiracy” to prevent historically marginalised communities from obtaining reliable population data.

These are political allegations by the Congress and have not been established by the government or through an independent assessment of the Census methodology.

Why the caste ‘drop-down’ menu matters

Jai Hind gave the example of the carpenter community in Haryana to explain the problem he believes could arise from open-ended responses. He said the community may identify itself through names including Badhai, Jangid, Jangra, Khati, Dhiman, Suthar and Tarkhan.

If an enumerator records exactly what each household says without linking these names to a standardised caste registry, the same or closely related communities could appear as separate entries in the database.

He also referred to variations in spelling and pronunciation across states. A caste name may be written differently by different respondents or enumerators, while the same community may have different regional names. Jai Hind argued that such fragmentation could become particularly significant in a country where caste identities and nomenclature vary across linguistic and geographical regions.

He contrasted this with a structured system in which an enumerator would select a recognised caste from a pre-existing list. Such a system, he argued, would allow different names and spellings to be mapped to a common category and would make the final data more consistent.

Centre’s 2021 affidavit raises questions

The Congress has based its criticism partly on a document submitted by the Union government to the Supreme Court in 2021.

The document is a reply affidavit filed on behalf of the Union of India in State of Maharashtra versus Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 841 of 2021. In the affidavit, the government discussed difficulties associated with caste data collected during the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011.

One section specifically discussed the absence of a pre-existing Registry of Castes. The government noted that enumerators had sometimes recorded the same caste differently. The affidavit gave the example of “Mappilas” in Kerala, stating that the caste had reportedly been spelt in 40 different ways by different enumerators, resulting in what appeared to be 40 separate castes.

The affidavit also referred to cases where households did not disclose their caste and enumerators marked the relevant column accordingly.

Most importantly, the government stated that there had been no Registry of Castes prepared before the 2011 Census and that it would have been ideal for the Registry of Castes to have a “drop down menu for selection of the castes” so that consistent data could be generated which could be relied upon.

It was this portion of the affidavit that Jairam Ramesh highlighted while questioning the design of Census 2027.

Jairam Ramesh asks why the Centre abandoned its earlier recommendation

Ramesh argued that the government had itself acknowledged the need for a standardised caste selection mechanism in its 2021 affidavit.

“The question now is: why does Census 2027 NOT have this drop down menu that the Modi Government recommended in the affidavit it submitted to the Supreme Court in September 2021?” Ramesh said in a statement.

He further claimed that similar caste menus had been prepared before caste surveys in Bihar and Telangana and that such a mechanism had also been suggested by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2025.

The Congress has therefore framed the present controversy around what it sees as a contradiction: the Union government acknowledged in 2021 that a standardised caste registry and selection menu would help produce reliable data, but the current questionnaire does not publicly show such a mechanism.

Congress links the issue to OBC representation

The controversy is not merely about the wording of one question. At its core is the question of whether Census 2027 will generate sufficiently reliable data to determine the population and social position of different caste groups.

Jai Hind argued that accurate caste data is necessary to understand representation in education, employment and institutions of political and economic power. He also linked the issue to the Congress slogan of “Jitni Aabadi, Utna Haq” and the party’s demand for policies based on population data.

He further raised the issue of differences within the OBC category itself, arguing that a broad OBC figure would not necessarily reveal the relative population and representation of individual communities, particularly those considered extremely backward.

The question of classification becomes important because India has thousands of caste and sub-caste identities, with nomenclature often differing between states and even within regions. A census that records names without an effective mechanism for standardisation could therefore produce a very large number of distinct entries.

The 2011 experience remains central to the debate

The Centre’s 2021 affidavit is significant because it acknowledged some of the problems that emerged from caste data collection during the SECC 2011 exercise.

The affidavit said caste names had been recorded differently by enumerators and that there was no pre-existing caste registry against which responses could be standardised. It argued that these problems contributed to the absence of reliable caste-based census data that could be used for constitutional or statutory exercises.

The government had therefore itself identified standardisation as an important requirement for obtaining consistent caste data.

The present dispute is whether Census 2027 has adequately addressed that problem.

What happens to the data after enumeration?

The absence of “OBC” as a separately printed option in Question 10 does not, by itself, establish that OBC households will not be counted. The notification uses the broader term “Caste,” and the government has announced caste enumeration across communities.

The more important question is what happens after an individual gives a caste name to the enumerator: Will that response be mapped against a standardised caste registry? Will synonymous and regionally different names be merged? Will state-specific caste lists be reconciled with a national classification? And will the resulting OBC and caste-wise data be publicly released?

These methodological questions will ultimately determine the usefulness of the exercise.

The debate has intensified because caste data could have significant implications for reservation, representation and welfare policy. Proponents of a nationwide caste census have argued that the country cannot formulate evidence-based social justice policies without knowing the demographic and socio-economic composition of its communities.

For the Congress, the absence of an explicitly identified OBC category and the apparent absence of a publicly specified caste selection menu have raised concerns that the exercise may reproduce some of the problems associated with the 2011 caste data rather than resolving them.

The government’s explanation of how caste responses will be standardised and classified will therefore be crucial to answering the central question: will Census 2027 produce a genuinely usable caste database, or merely collect millions of unstandardised caste names?