Overview
- On Tuesday, August 25, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding withdrawal of the current census questionnaire and a fresh draft after wider consultations.
- They say the questionnaire’s open-ended caste field will record whatever name respondents give and that this will split the same caste into many different entries, creating hundreds of thousands of distinct labels that will be hard to consolidate.
- The letter highlights that the form does not include the term ‘Backward Class’ and warns that without an explicit OBC field it will be impossible to produce a reliable headcount of Other Backward Classes for reservation and welfare planning.
- As an alternative, Congress proposes a pre-verified drop-down list of castes drawn from existing SEBC lists, the Anthropological Survey of India and state surveys such as Bihar’s and Telangana’s, noting enumeration has only begun in parts of the country and the nationwide count is scheduled for February 2027.
- The party accused the government of a ‘whitewash’ and cited past failures such as the 2011 SECC to argue that flawed methodology would erode trust and undercut social‑justice policy decisions, while the Centre has not publicly accepted the demand.