The Telangana government will carry out a caste survey from November 6 to November 30, state minister Ponnam Prabhakar announced on Wednesday, reported ANI.
With this, Telangana will become the third state to carry out such a survey after Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.
Ponnam Prabhakar, the state minister for backward classes welfare, said that the survey will be conducted on the directions of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. “We are fulfilling the promise that we made during the elections,” Prabhakar said.
The minister said that the survey will ensure that resources are distributed equitably among communities depending on their share in the population.
The state government plans to rope in about 80,000 government employees and train them to carry out the survey, PTI reported.
On Monday, the Telangana Commission for Backward Classes began public hearings in order to receive representations on the matter from interested parties.
Prabhakar added on Monday that if the Congress comes to power at the Centre, it will conduct a nationwide caste survey.
A nationwide caste census has been a key demand of the Opposition over the past year.
The Congress had promised a nationwide caste census in its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
Proponents of a caste census argue that it will help ascertain the true population of India’s marginalised classes and castes, and would pave the way for policies such as increased quotas in government jobs and education.
On the other hand, the Centre told the Supreme Court in an affidavit in 2021 that it was a conscious policy decision not to include information about any other caste, apart from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, from the decadal census. It had said that collecting data on the population of Other Backward Classes would be administratively difficult and would lack accuracy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is in power at the Centre.
The BJP, however, has softened its stance towards the exercise since 2021. In November, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the BJP did not oppose the caste census, but that any decision about it would be taken after wide consultations.
BJP chief JP Nadda had said on April 12 that his party was not against the caste census but alleged that the Congress intended to use the exercise to divide society.
India had last conducted an exercise to count the population of all its caste groups in 1931. In independent India, census reports have published data on the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but not other caste groups.