Overview
- The central gazette for the 2027 household schedule issued on August 14 lists Item 10 as “Scheduled Caste (SC)/ Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Caste” with no distinct OBC column and limited self‑enumeration began in high‑altitude and snowbound areas on August 17.
- OBC organisations and the Congress say the missing OBC column makes it unclear how members of Other Backward Classes will be flagged in the returns and the National OBC Federation has warned of large protests unless the notification is changed.
- Experts warn that an open‑ended caste question without a standard sub‑caste list will produce thousands of name variants and spelling differences that could make aggregation difficult and provide a pretext for not publishing a clear OBC count.
- The dispute recalls the 2011 SECC, which recorded caste names but never released its caste dataset and feeds distrust about whether the 2027 census will publish usable OBC figures.
- Operational and policy hurdles complicate producing a single national OBC tally because the central government list has about 2,479 entries while states maintain their own lists and independent surveys estimate OBCs at roughly 42–46 percent of the population.