The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition challenging the inclusion of caste enumeration along with the national population census.
India conducts a population census once every 10 years, with the last exercise held in 2011. The next census, due in 2021, was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later delays linked to the Lok Sabha elections.
Opposition parties, including the Congress, have been pressing for a caste census to be conducted alongside the population count. The report said the Union Cabinet committee on political affairs had approved the proposal in May last year to carry out caste enumeration nationwide along with the census.
The petition was filed by Sudhakar Kummula, seeking a ban on conducting caste enumeration with the census. Hearing the matter, a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant held that decisions on whether and how the census should include caste details fall within the government’s policy domain.
The court observed that knowing the number of backward classes in the population can help the government tailor welfare measures accordingly, and said it would not intervene in such policy decisions.
