The central government will conduct ethnic census in two phases. The Ministry of Home Affairs said on Wednesday that the first phase will start from 1 October 2026. This includes 4 hill states- Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
The second phase will start from 1 March 2027. In this, census will start in the rest of the states of the country. The Ministry of Home Affairs said in its press release that along with the calculation of castes, it has been decided to conduct population census. The notification related to this will be published in the official gazette by 16 June 2025.
The Center announced to conduct ethnic census on 30 April 2025. This will be the first ethnic census in the country after independence. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had said that the ethnic census will be done with the original census.
All the opposition parties, including the Congress, have been demanding caste census. The last census in the country took place in 2011. It is done every 10 years. Accordingly, the next census was to take place in 2021, but it was postponed due to the Kovid-19 epidemic.
Socio-economic calculation was done in 2011, data not released
The socio-economic and caste census was conducted in 2011 during the Manmohan Singh government. It was done by the Ministry of Rural Development, Urban Development Ministry and Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the data of this survey was never made public. The data of its SC-ST Households has been released on the website of the Ministry of Rural Development.
The Census Act 1948 provides for the calculation of SC-ST. It has to be amended for calculating OBC. This will reveal the figures of 2,650 castes of OBC. According to the 2011 census, there are 1,270 SC, 748 ST castes. In 2011, the SC population was 16.6% and ST 8.6%.
29 columns in census form, only SC-ST detail
By 2011, there were a total of 29 columns in the census form. These were recorded only with questions like name, address, business, education, employment and migration. Now extra columns can be added to caste census.
