Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi have jointly written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, warning that the government's proposed 'open-ended' format for collecting caste data in the upcoming census risks producing inaccurate and fragmented records. The letter, sent on 25 August, calls for replacing the current approach with a structured 'drop-down list of castes' to ensure data integrity.

The Core Concern

The Congress leaders argued that under the open-ended method, enumerators record whatever caste name an individual provides — verbatim. Given that the same caste is often known by different names, sub-castes, and linguistic variations across India's regions, this approach could split a single community into thousands of distinct entries.

'This would result in the emergence of hundreds of thousands of caste names, rendering the entire dataset obtained from the caste census useless,' the letter stated. The leaders further cautioned that without an accurate population count, 'any assessment of its status will inevitably be flawed.'

Impact on Marginalised Communities

Kharge and Gandhi warned that data fragmentation would directly harm Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Extremely Backward Classes, and other marginalised groups. Critically, they noted that the very term 'Backward Class' is absent from the current census questionnaire, meaning the actual size of the OBC population may not be captured at all.

'This will disadvantage backward, extremely backward, and other marginalised communities, and will also impact decisions regarding education, employment, welfare schemes, and social justice,' they wrote. Social justice policies, they argued, 'cannot be effectively formulated without accurate data.'

What the Congress Proposes

The letter recommends adopting the same enumeration method used for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) — a pre-defined, standardised drop-down list of castes. The Congress leaders said such a list can be compiled from existing government records, including those for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, and data from the Anthropological Survey of India.

They cited the caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar as successful precedents for this approach, and attached caste lists from both surveys to their letter for reference.

Congress Calls for Fresh Questionnaire

'We do not accept the caste census being conducted in this manner. The government should scrap the current questionnaire and draft a new one after consulting political parties, experts, and the public,' Kharge and Gandhi stated in the letter.

This comes as the caste census — long a politically charged demand — has finally been included in the upcoming national census exercise. The Congress and several opposition parties have consistently pushed for comprehensive caste enumeration to inform reservation and welfare policy. The party's intervention now shifts the debate from whether to count castes, to how accurately that count can be conducted.

What Happens Next

The government is yet to respond publicly to the letter. With census preparations under way, the window for revising the questionnaire format is narrowing. Opposition pressure, combined with the methodological concerns raised by state-level caste surveys, is likely to keep this dispute at the centre of the political conversation in the weeks ahead.