New Delhi: After a four-years delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, the government of India finally looks to set the ball rolling for the population census early next year. A decennial exercise, Census is the survey of a country’s population and related parameters like religion and depressed classes such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The recent extension to Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan as Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India till August 2026 indicates that the government expects the Census exercise to
get over by then. A 1995-batch IAS officer, Narayan was to retire in December this year.
The completion of Census will also pave the way for the delimitation exercise or the redrafting of Lok Sabha constituencies. Besides, the Census is also linked with the implementation of 33 per cent women reservation in parliament as it can only be enforced once the delimitation is completed and the total numbers of Lok Sabha seats are known.
Delimitation Exercise
A ‘controversial’ exercise which all governments have been avoiding because of backlash from southern states, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government had delayed the delimitations for 25 years via 84th Amendment. It said that delimitation will be carried out only after the figures of the “first census after 2026 is published”. Since the Census is a decennial exercise and the first Census after 2026 can only be in 2031, it effectively meant that the delimitation has been postponed till after 2031. However, if the government plans to start the Census next year and finish it by 2026, it can also go ahead with delimitation exercises and women reservation in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.
Concerns of Southern State
The Southern states are concerned about the impact of the delimitation exercise on their ‘political weightage’ because it is likely to give a disproportionate number of seats to northern states like UP and Bihar due to massive increase in their population. On the other hand, the family planning programmes have been more effective in southern states. With Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP key ally in the NDA, the government cannot afford to ignore the sentiments of the southern states. According to information, the government is looking to tweak the population criterion or find some middle path agreeable to all.
Issue of Caste Census
However, whether the government will go ahead with the caste enumeration is still not clear. According to media reports, while one of the 31 questions drafted for the Census relates to SC/ST category, there is no question yet related to enumeration of other caste groups. However, some have suggested that this is not a major problem and the OBC category could be added to the existing counts of SCs, STs and religion along with the surveys of sub-sects within the general category.
The government will have to find some workable solution here and is unlikely to ignore the demand altogether. Especially when several BJP allies in NDA have supported the demand for caste census including the JD(U), LJP, RJD, Apna Dal etc. Besides, the Caste Census has also been a long pending demand of the majority of INDIA-bloc parties including the Congress. Interestingly, the party has itself avoided going
for the Caste Census while being in power for almost 50 years since independence.
