Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on 25 August launched a sharp attack on the Central Government, calling the ongoing caste census process 'completely flawed' and questioning the intentions behind its design. Gehlot argued that the confusion being created around the exercise is not accidental but a deliberate strategy to undermine the census's core objective and prevent accurate social data from emerging.

The Open-Ended Question Problem

At the heart of Gehlot's criticism is the government's decision to adopt an 'open-ended question' format, under which each respondent's caste is recorded exactly as they self-report it. Given that the same caste is known by different names, sub-castes, and linguistic variations across India's regions, this approach risks fragmenting a single community into thousands of distinct entries — rendering the final dataset unreliable and, critics argue, practically unusable for policy purposes.

Notably, the term Other Backward Classes (OBCs) has not been included in the census framework at all, according to Gehlot. This omission, he warned, would make it impossible to accurately determine the population of Backward Classes — the very communities the exercise was meant to count.

Congress Writes to PM Modi

Gehlot said Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that a comprehensive, pre-prepared list of castes be used as the basis for data collection. He pointed to precedent: both the Telangana caste survey of 2024 and the Bihar caste survey of 2022 employed structured caste lists rather than open-ended self-reporting — an approach that produced far more usable data.

What Gehlot Is Demanding

The former chief minister demanded that the Centre immediately withdraw the current questionnaire and formulate a revised one through consultations with political parties, domain experts, and the public. He argued that a caste census can only fulfil its mandate if it generates accurate, meaningful data that reflects the country's social realities.

Such data, Gehlot stressed, is essential for framing effective policies on social justice, equitable representation, and the welfare of disadvantaged communities — goals that would be defeated if the data itself is fragmented and contested.

The Broader Political Context

This comes amid mounting pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centre from Opposition parties over the design of the national caste census, which was announced to widespread initial approval. The BJP government's methodology choices have since become a flashpoint, with critics arguing that procedural decisions — particularly the exclusion of OBC as a category and the open-ended format — could effectively dilute the political and policy impact of the exercise. The Congress's direct letter to PM Modi signals an escalation from criticism to formal accountability demand.