New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a PIL questioning the procedure adopted to record, classify and verify the caste information of citizens in the 2027 General Census.
SC refuses to entertain PIL query procedures to record caste of citizens in 2027 censusThe apex court, however, asked the Center and the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India to consider the suggestions made by PIL petitioner Akash Goel, an educationist, in this regard.
Goel, represented by senior advocate Mukta Gupta, said a transparent questionnaire, to be used for recording, classifying and verifying caste details of citizens, should be placed in the public domain.
The senior advocate complained that the Directorate of Census Operations has not disclosed criteria for recording the caste identity of citizens “despite recognizing that caste enumeration has now extended beyond Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes”.
The bench told the PIL petitioner that there was “no pre-determined data” to identify caste information.
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“The census exercise is regulated under the Census Act, 1958 and the 1990 rules made thereunder which empower the respondent authority to prescribe the particulars and norms of census proceedings,” the bench noted.
“We have no reason to doubt that the respondent authority with the help and assistance of domain experts must have developed a robust mechanism to nullify any wrongdoing as apprehended by the petitioner and several like-minded persons. We find that the petitioner has raised some relevant issues through representations to the Registrar General of Census Operations… as well,” the CJI said.
The bench said the authority can consider the legal notices and suggestions raised in the petition and dispose of the PIL.
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The 2027 census, officially the 16th national census, will include the comprehensive caste enumeration since 1931 and the country’s first fully digital census.
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