BC leaders seek amendments to Census Act to use caste data
Hyderabad: The proposed
caste Census
by the Centre will help the state govt enhance
BC reservations
in education, employment, and local bodies.
Telangana BC leaders
now want the Centre to allow state govts to utilise the survey data for implementing various welfare schemes and formulating schemes for the BCs.
For that, the Centre has to make amendments to the Census Act, 1948.Apart from this, many amendments were required to fully utilise the census data, such as analysis by an expert committee like in Telangana.
The BC leaders say earlier surveys, such as the Samagra Kutumba Survey (SKS) done by the BRS govt and the caste survey done by the Congress govt last year, do not provide any legal status to utilise the outcome of the survey legally. They also have data privacy issues.BC leaders from about 96 various BC organisations discussed the issue during a meeting on Wednesday and decided to bring it to the notice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his appointment soon. "The Section 15 of the Census Act prohibits unauthorised communication of data and protects personal data collected during the Census. The data cannot be shared for any purposes other than statistical analysis unless specially permitted by the Centre. Another amendment is the duty of the public to answer questions which are general in nature, and now the Centre should amend and include caste details in the questionnaire," Vakulabharanam Krishna Mohan Rao, former chairman of the Telangana BC Commission, said.In the present Act, nowhere is caste enumeration specially mandated or prohibited, and it does not define caste or sub-caste, etc. "Legal backing is a must by way of amendment, as the earlier socio-economic caste census conducted by the UPA govt was under administrative orders but lacked any statutory backing under the Census Act, and the survey details could not be used till data. Now, it should be done in a legally acceptable way," Krishna Mohan Rao said.BC leaders like Rajya Sabha MP R Krishnaiah said the Census should be scientifically done without any legal gaps. The BC leaders from various organisations said the data should be useful to the state govt in extending various welfare schemes and even coming up with policies like extending financial assistance to the BCs, where the most backward in BCs should get the benefits.
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