OBC column missing from census questionnaire, Congress alleges conspiracy

The Congress has accused the Modi government of deliberately excluding the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category from the census questionnaire, calling it a “deep conspiracy” to keep the community's actual population out of official data. At a press conference on Monday, Congress OBC department chairman Anil Jaihind said the OBC category was missing from the 10th question in the form issued on August 14. He warned that an open-ended question on caste could lead to enumerators collecting as many as 46 lakh different caste names, which the government could use as an excuse not to conduct a scientific caste census.

The Times of India reports that officials involved in the census have explained that OBC status will not be recorded during enumeration because central and state lists of OBCs do not always align, making it unfeasible to include a dropdown menu. Officials said the utility of caste data will be assessed only after the census, and that AI-based tools can help aggregate figures despite spelling variations. They added that the Census Act bars individual data from being used as legal evidence or for government benefits, and that statisticians can detect misleading data through cross-referencing.