Caste-based census to be held in Bihar

Tags: State News

In the all-party meeting chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on June 1, it was decided that the census would be conducted on the basis of caste in Bihar soon.

• Its purpose is to take development works to the underprivileged people.

• The people involved in this mega exercise will be given proper training.

• It will be a time bound exercise and every detail of caste, sub-castes, community and religion will be taken care of for the development of all sections of the people.

• The census report will be published so that no one is left out and the media will also be informed about it from time to time.

• However, the central government had rejected the state government demand saying it would be a "divisive exercise", but also said that states can conduct caste census on their own.

• What is caste based census?

• In independent India, data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been published in every census from 1951 to 2011, but no data on other castes has been published.

• Every census until 1931 contained caste figures.

• Although, in 1941, caste-based data was collected but not published.

• In the absence of such a census, there is no proper estimate of the population of OBC and others.

• The Mandal Commission estimated the OBC population at 52%.