India will begin its long-delayed decadal census likely next year, people aware of the details said on Monday, potentially marking the beginning of a mammoth exercise that continued uninterrupted since 1872 but was thrown off schedule by the pandemic in 2020.
The decadal census is always important, but this particular round will hold outsized significance because this enumeration – likely to be completed by 2026, said the people cited above – will act as the basis for the redrawing of Lok Sabha constituencies.
This process, called delimitation, is expected to be fractious and open up old disputes of political representation between India’s poorer northern states that are more populous, and prosperous southern provinces where birth rates are below replacement levels.
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The country’s population count was conducted every 10 years since 1951, but the census work in 2021 could not be carried out due to the pandemic. So far, no formal announcement has been made on its next schedule.
“In all probability, the work for the census and the NPR will begin early next year and the population data will be announced by 2026,” said a person aware of details. “With this, the census cycle is likely to be changed. So, it will be 2025-2035 and then 2035-2045 and so on in future.”
It was not clear whether the census will count all castes as well, a key demand of opposition parties that has received support from some constituents of the National Democratic Alliance as well.
The census counts India’s scheduled castes and scheduled tribes but the practice of counting all castes – a British intervention – was discontinued at independence.
“The process of tabulating the country’s population will begin in 2025 and is expected to conclude by 2026, following which the process of carving out constituencies for the Lok Sabha through delimitation will begin,” said the first person quoted above.
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“The delimitation itself is expected to be completed by 2028, ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha polls,” the person added.
When conducted, the census will be the largest such process on earth, enumerating the population of the world’s most-populous nation.
The process has two stages: house-listing operations and actual enumeration.
The 2011 exercise covered 640 districts, 7,935 towns and over 600,000 villages. Provisional data from the process was published on March 2011.
Union home minister Amit Shah said in September that the decadal Census exercise will be conducted “soon” and a decision, if any, on caste census will be conveyed at an appropriate time. In the absence of fresh data, government agencies are still formulating policies and allocating subsidies based on the data of the 2011 census.
The house listing phase of the census and the exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR) were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020, but it was postponed due to the Covid outbreak. The entire census and the NPR exercise is likely to cost the government more than ₹12,000 crore, according to officials who didn’t want to be named. However, the government reduced the budget for census 2021 from ₹3,768 crore in 2021-22 to ₹1,309 crore in the Union Budget 2024-25.
Census 2021 will be the first digital census, giving citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate. The NPR has been made compulsory for citizens who want to exercise the right to fill the census form on their own rather than through government enumerators. For this, the census authority has designed a self-enumeration portal that is yet to be launched.
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This time, the census will hold additional importance because it will form the basis of the Lok Sabha delimitation, a process that has been frozen since 2002 but one that is likely to widen India’s political fault lines. The women’s reservation bill – which sets aside a third of seats in the Lower House and state assemblies – passed by Parliament will also come into effect after the next census and the delimitation exercise, one of the persons cited above said.
Writing in HT in 2019, political scientists Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hinston calculated that in 2026, Uttar Pradesh’s Lok Sabha delegation could balloon from 80 to 143, while Kerala’s would remain unchanged at 20, and Tamil Nadu’s would grow from 39 to 49. The Lok Sabha”s overall strength in this scenario will increase to 848. Already, a number of southern leaders such as Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin have articulated anxieties around the falling birth rates in their respective provinces.
The development also comes against the backdrop of a mounting demand by Opposition parties to carry out a caste-based enumeration of the entire population. Already, states such as Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have completed their own caste surveys and other states such as Telangana are set to embark on their own exercises.
According to a person aware of the details, there is a provision for individuals to mark their “sects” in the enumeration forms. “For instance, there are Ravidasis, Rammanis, Ahmadis, Anand Margis and Bairagais. There is a provision to denote these sects,” said the first person quoted above. There is a possibility that the new count may allow for the inclusion of sub sects within existing caste groups and redrawing of constituencies based on geographical expanse said this person.
The questionnaire will have 31 questions.
The ruling BJP, which built its electoral success on the back of social engineering of different castes, particularly those counted as socially and economically disadvantaged, is yet to take a firm stand on the issue of a caste census. The party was initially ambiguous about its position on the issue, but has had to rethink after allies such as the Lok Janshakti Party and the Janata Dal (United) expressed strong support for caste-based enumeration.
The BJP’s ideological fount, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has articulated that while it does not oppose a caste census, it is against the exercise being used for political purposes.
Urging the government to hold an all-party meeting, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said, “Will this new census include a detailed enumeration of all castes in the country, in addition to that of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes that has been done in every census since 1951? According to the Constitution of India, such a Caste Census is the sole responsibility of the Union government,” Ramesh said in a post on X.
BJP ally JD(U) has also expressed support for a caste census in the past.
JDU national spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, “We are in favour of a nationwide caste census, and if the government plans to conduct the survey next year, we would be very happy if it includes a caste census. We are part of the alliance and have raised this issue within the National Democratic Alliance. A nationwide caste census will empower the underprivileged sections of society.”
The Trinamool Congress dismissed the development as a “rumour”, with a spokesperson saying, “We don’t offer comment on rumours. Let the government declare officially first.”
Sharing the notification about an extension for Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, who is currently serving as Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, in a series of posts on X, Ramesh on Monday said, “Will this Census be used for determining the strength of each state in the Lok Sabha as provided for in Article 82 of the Constitution of India (which says that the first Census taken after the year 2026 and the publication of its results will the basis of any such reconstitution)? Will this work to the disadvantage of states that have been pioneers in family planning?”
Congress leader Sachin Pilot targeted the Centre over the delay in conducting the census and said that its intention has always been to suppress the data.
“The intention of the central government has always been to suppress the data. This government has not consistently presented all the data to the public,” Pilot told reporters in Jaipur.
Union minister Anupriya Patel slammed the opposition parties for raising the issue of caste census.
“Caste census is not a new issue. We have always supported it. Our party has always advocated in favour of caste census. Our party has a clear stand that the caste census should be conducted…It (caste census) could be a new issue for the opposition. When they were in power, be it Congress or the Samajwadi Party, they were not concerned about the caste census,” Patel, the union minister of state for health and family welfare, said in Lucknow.
As per the directive of the Delimitation Commission of India, which has the mandate to draw the boundaries of legislative assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies based on the last census, the next delimitation can be held only after 2026.
“Following the 84th amendment to the Constitution, in 2002, the delimitation was to be done after 2026, based on the first census conducted after 2026. There is a laid down process and structure that has to be followed,” said one of the persons quoted above.
“As per the laid down procedure, all constituencies as far as practicable, have to be geographically compact areas, and physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facilities of communication and public convenience are also considered,” said the person quoted above.
