VIJAYAWADA: YSRC MP V Vijaya Sai Reddy introduced a private member’s bill in the Rajya Sabha on Friday seeking an amendment to the Indian Constitution to provide for caste enumeration of people from Backward Communities (BC). Explaining the reasons for the private bill and its objectives, he said India is home to a diverse population belonging to a broad array of castes.
This necessitates the availability of latest and extensive data on caste so that the Central and State governments can design effective policies for affirmative action and resource redistribution, Vijayasai Reddy added.
The caste data was first enumerated in India within the general census undertaken in 1872 and continued for the next six decades until 1931. However, in the post-independence era, in every census conducted so far from 1951 to 2011, no caste data, besides Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), has been collected, he pointed out.
Vijayasai Reddy said the Mandal Commission in 1980 has assessed Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) to be 52% back when the Indian population was at 68 crore. Since then, the Indian population has more than doubled to 138 crore, but we still do not have any updated, he observed.
“In April 2021, the National Commission for BCs requested the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to collect information on the population of OBCs as part of the 2021 census. Similar recommendations have been made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Welfare of OBCs. But no efforts have been undertaken by the Central Government in this regard thus far,” he said.