‘Scrap misleading questionnaire’: Kharge, Rahul Gandhi write to PM Modi on caste census

Opposition leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have penned a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding the scrapping of the current caste census questionnaire. In their letter, dated August 20, Kharge and Gandhi criticized the open-ended question format used to record caste details, stating that it results in misleading data.

They urged the government to consult political parties, experts, and the public before formulating a new questionnaire. The leaders highlighted that social justice policies in India cannot be effectively implemented without accurate caste data. They explained that the same caste may be known by different names, sub-castes, and linguistic variations across regions, leading to fragmentation and making the dataset useless.

Kharge and Gandhi proposed introducing a drop-down list of castes, similar to the methods used for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). They noted that such lists can be compiled using existing government records, making the caste census accurate, meaningful, and beneficial.