Overview
- The Centre has kept Question 10 as an open text field for caste in the Census 2027 notification and limited enumeration has begun in select areas while a nationwide rollout is scheduled next year.
- Census officials say enumerators will record caste responses verbatim and then use a centrally prepared Code Directory plus validation checks to map and standardise entries after enumeration.
- Congress, the DMK and PMK have demanded that the questionnaire be redrafted to include pre‑verified, state‑wise dropdown lists and the Congress is preparing a 100‑day OBC rights campaign to press the demand.
- Critics warn free-text capture can produce extreme fragmentation — citing millions of variant entries and lessons from the 2011 SECC — while officials say integrating official OBC lists directly could confuse enumerators because those lists mix caste names with local ‘classes’.
- The dispute matters for reservation policy and welfare targeting because it could change OBC/EBC counts, influence political mobilisation and affect the census timetable, so decisions on whether to revise the format will shape how usable the final caste data is.