Congress flags Census 2027 caste questions, alleges ‘nefarious purpose’

The Congress on Wednesday sharpened its attack on the Centre over the methodology for collecting caste data in Census 2027, alleging that the exercise has been “deliberately flawed” and hinting at what it called a “deeper nefarious purpose” behind the questions being asked.

Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said the questionnaire contains a series of “micro questions” on religion, date of birth and the place of birth of both parents that, he claimed, have never been asked in a census before.

Ramesh shared on X a media report claiming that Census 2027 will seek details of the religion, date of birth and place of birth — down to the village level — of both the respondent’s father and mother.

The report also claimed that respondents will have multiple options while answering the caste question. Apart from an open field in which they can enter their caste, the questionnaire would reportedly allow them to select “does not want to declare caste” or “no caste”.

“The methodology of asking Qs on caste in Census 2027 is deliberately flawed. The micro Qs on religion, date of birth, place of birth of parents have never been asked before,” Ramesh said in his post.

“The census is confidential. Clearly Census 27 has a deeper nefarious purpose,” he added.

The latest salvo came a day after the Congress accused the Modi government of attempting to sabotage the caste census and questioned the absence of a drop-down menu for selecting castes in the Census 2027 questionnaire.

The Opposition party pointed to an affidavit filed by the Centre in the Supreme Court in September 2021, in which the government had discussed the potential usefulness of such a system.

Ramesh recalled that on 21 September 2021, the Modi government had filed an affidavit categorically rejecting a plea seeking a caste census. Yet, he pointed to paragraph 12(d) of the affidavit, which said that there had been no registry of castes before the 2011 Census and that a registry with a drop-down menu for caste selection would have been “ideal” for generating consistent and reliable data.

Ramesh has now questioned why the mechanism referred to by the government itself in its Supreme Court affidavit is absent from the 2027 Census.

The Congress had also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of making a “complete U-turn” on the issue after announcing a caste census on April 30, 2025. The party has since alleged that the government is now making another reversal — what Ramesh described as a “U-turn on his earlier U-turn”.

The dispute over the questionnaire has added another layer to the already contentious politics surrounding caste enumeration. While the government’s census exercise is expected to generate a vast body of demographic data, the Congress has raised questions over how caste information will be elicited, classified and ultimately converted into data that can be relied upon.

For the Opposition, the absence of a standardised caste-selection mechanism is particularly significant. Ramesh has argued that the government itself had recognised in its 2021 affidavit that a drop-down menu could help produce consistent caste data. The Congress is now demanding to know why that approach has not been incorporated into Census 2027.

With PTI inputs