New Delhi, August 25, 2026: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi have asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to scrap the recently notified questionnaire for caste enumeration in the 2027 Census, arguing that the current method could produce fragmented and unreliable data.
In a joint letter to Modi, the two senior Congress leaders described the government's approach to recording caste information as “misleading” and warned that the resulting dataset could become difficult to use for policymaking if people belonging to the same caste are recorded under different names, sub-castes or regional variations.
The intervention has opened another major political debate over how India should collect caste data and, more importantly, how that data should eventually be used to shape policies concerning education, employment, welfare, reservations and social justice.
Why Congress is challenging the questionnaire
The main objection from Kharge and Gandhi is the use of an open-ended question for recording caste.
Under this approach, respondents would provide the name of their caste, and the answer would be recorded as given. Congress argues that this could create serious inconsistencies because caste names vary considerably across India.
The same community may be known by different names in different states or regions. There can also be differences arising from sub-castes, local terminology, spelling and language.
According to Kharge and Gandhi, if enumerators record every variation separately, one socially identifiable caste could appear in the final database as hundreds or thousands of separate entries.
The Congress leaders therefore fear that instead of producing a clear picture of India's caste composition, the exercise could generate an enormous number of fragmented categories.
They argue that such a database would make it difficult to determine the actual population of individual communities.
The OBC question
A particularly important concern raised by Kharge and Gandhi relates to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
They said the present questionnaire does not specifically use the term “OBC” or provide a separate category for backward classes. Their argument is that, without a systematic mechanism for identifying and grouping OBC communities, the census may fail to establish the actual size of the OBC population.
This matters because caste data is closely linked to debates about representation and affirmative action.
India's reservation and welfare policies depend, in different ways, on identifying socially and educationally disadvantaged communities. If the underlying population figures are incomplete or inconsistent, Congress argues, assessments of those communities' social and economic conditions could also become unreliable.
The leaders warned that inaccurate caste data could ultimately affect decisions involving education, employment, welfare programmes and broader social-justice policies.
Congress proposes a “drop-down” caste list
Rather than simply criticising the existing system, Kharge and Gandhi have proposed an alternative.
They want the government to prepare a standardised list of castes that enumerators can use when recording responses. The idea is similar to a drop-down menu: instead of allowing respondents' answers to create unlimited categories, officials would select the appropriate caste from an established list.
The Congress leaders said a similar approach is already used for the enumeration of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
They also pointed to caste surveys conducted in Bihar in 2022 and Telangana in 2024, saying those exercises provide examples of how a structured caste list can be used to collect more consistent data.
According to the two leaders, the government could construct such a list using existing official records, including lists of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes and information available through the Anthropological Survey of India.
Why standardisation matters
The disagreement is fundamentally about data quality.
Imagine that a community is known by one name in one state, another name in a neighbouring state and several local names elsewhere. If every response is entered exactly as spoken, the database could treat those names as different communities.
The problem would become even more complicated if spelling variations or linguistic differences were recorded separately.
For a census, simply collecting a large quantity of information is not enough. The information also needs to be classified consistently so that researchers and policymakers can compare populations across regions.
This is the central point behind Congress's criticism.
Kharge and Gandhi argue that an open-ended system may generate a huge database but still fail to answer the basic question the caste census is supposed to address: How many people belong to each caste and community?
What the Congress leaders want from Modi
The two leaders have asked the Centre to withdraw the existing questionnaire and prepare a new one.
They have also called for consultations involving:
Political parties
Demographic and social experts
Relevant stakeholders
The wider public
Their argument is that the caste census is too important to be designed without broader consultation.
A revised questionnaire, they said, should ensure that the population of every caste and community can be identified accurately and that the resulting data is precise enough to support government policy.
The leaders enclosed caste lists used in Bihar and Telangana with their letter as examples of possible approaches.
Jairam Ramesh attacks the Centre
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh has separately criticised the government's approach, describing the current caste-census exercise as a “whitewash.”
Ramesh said the latest letter represented another attempt by Congress leaders to get the government to reconsider the methodology. He also alleged that the Centre was effectively undermining the purpose of a caste census by choosing what Congress considers an inadequate method of collecting information.
The political dispute is significant because Congress has made caste enumeration a major issue in its broader argument for greater representation of backward communities.
The 2011 experience is part of the debate
The controversy also has a historical dimension.
India's 2011 Census was accompanied by a separate Socio-Economic and Caste Census exercise, but the caste data generated by that process was never released in the form many political parties and social groups had sought.
Congress is now arguing that India should avoid repeating problems associated with earlier attempts and should establish a robust classification system before the new census begins.
The party has also highlighted a 2021 affidavit in which the Centre had discussed the difficulty of conducting a caste census without an established caste registry. Congress leaders say this makes the government's current decision to use an open-ended approach particularly questionable.
Why the caste census is politically important
Caste data in India is not merely a demographic statistic.
It can influence debates over representation, reservation, welfare allocation and the distribution of government resources. Political parties also use caste demographics to understand electoral and social dynamics.
For decades, there have been demands for comprehensive caste data to establish whether existing policies accurately reflect the country's social composition.
Supporters of a detailed caste census argue that government policy cannot properly address inequality without knowing the demographic and socio-economic position of different communities.
Kharge and Gandhi have made precisely this argument, saying that social-justice policies require accurate data.
Government faces a difficult balancing act
The Centre now faces a political and technical challenge.
On one hand, collecting caste information through an open-ended question may appear straightforward because respondents can identify their caste in their own words.
On the other hand, such flexibility can create classification problems when millions of responses are collected across India's diverse linguistic and regional landscape.
A pre-defined list could improve consistency, but compiling a comprehensive national caste list presents its own challenges because caste identities and classifications can differ across states.
That makes the design of the questionnaire particularly important.
Congress wants the Telangana and Bihar models examined
Kharge and Gandhi's reference to Bihar and Telangana is significant because both states have conducted large-scale caste surveys using structured approaches.
Congress believes the experience of these surveys could help the Centre design a more reliable national system. The leaders have specifically suggested that the government study the caste lists used in those exercises before finalising the national methodology.
Their proposal is therefore not simply to add another question to the census. They want the entire mechanism for identifying and classifying caste groups reconsidered.
What happens next
The immediate question is whether the Modi government will accept the demand to redraw the questionnaire.
Kharge and Gandhi have asked the Centre to abandon the existing format and conduct consultations before preparing a replacement. The government has not, in the reports cited here, announced that it will withdraw the questionnaire.
The dispute is likely to remain politically significant as preparations for the 2027 Census progress.
At stake is more than the wording of a census question. The final methodology will determine how India's caste data is collected, classified and interpreted for years to come.
For Congress, the concern is straightforward: a caste census is useful only if the data accurately identifies the communities being counted.
The party argues that an open-ended system risks creating thousands of separate labels for the same communities and could make it impossible to establish a reliable national picture of caste demographics.
Kharge and Rahul Gandhi are therefore pressing the Centre to replace the current questionnaire with a standardised system, developed after consultation with political parties, experts and the public.
The larger debate now is whether India can design a caste census that is both comprehensive enough to capture the country's complex social identities and standardised enough to produce reliable national data.
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