Anbumani Ramadoss Urges MPs to Push for Pre-Loaded Caste Lists in Census

Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) president and Rajya Sabha member Anbumani Ramadoss on Sunday urged Members of Parliament across all political parties to prevail upon the union government to alter the data collection methodology for the upcoming caste census.

In a letter sent in English, Tamil, and Hindi to all Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members from Chennai, the former Union minister highlighted potential flaws in the data collection framework planned by the Registrar General of India (RGI). The second phase of individual data collection is scheduled to begin this September.

Ramadoss pointed out that reports indicate the RGI plans to leave the caste response column blank and record whatever names citizens provide. He warned that this open-ended method would trigger significant administrative confusion during enumeration.

He explained that because citizens frequently provide sub-caste names rather than officially recognised caste categories, recording raw inputs would falsely inflate the total number of castes. He stated that such an outcome would render the collected demographic data unusable for framing effective social justice policies.

To address this issue, the PMK leader proposed integrating existing Central and State government caste lists directly into the software of the digital census application. Under this model, enumerators would select the appropriate caste from a pre-loaded dropdown list during their household visits.

Ramadoss noted that a similar dropdown model was successfully implemented during state-level surveys conducted in Bihar in 2023 and Telangana in 2024, producing accurate and reliable demographic data.

Calling on parliamentarians to intervene before enumeration commences on September 1, Ramadoss warned that failing to correct the data entry methodology at this stage would permanently derail the accuracy of India's social justice calculations.