Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Govt sends caste census to GoM

NEW DELHI: The contentious proposal to hold a caste-based census has been referred to a GoM, likely to be headed by finance minister Pranab

Mukherjee.



The Union Cabinet, which met here on Wednesday to take a call on the demand, failed to hammer out a consensus on the issue, even though a great majority of the members came out in favour of incorporating caste in the census data-gathering exercise. Home minister P Chidambaram cited technical and practical difficulties in asking the census enumerators to start gathering information on caste immediately. It was eventually decided that the matter would be discussed threadbare by the GoM before taking a final decision.



Even though the composition of the GoM has not been finalised, it is expected that Mr Kapil Sibal (HRD), Mr Veerappa Moily (law), Mr Mukul Wasnik (social justice) and Mr Kantilal Bhuria (tribal affairs) would be among its members.



With the exception of Mr Sibal and commerce minister Anand Sharma, almost all the other participants in the Cabinet meeting pitched in vigorously for a caste-based census. These included, besides Mr Moily and Mr Wasnik, Mr S Jaipal Reddy (urban development), Mr P K Bansal (parliamentary affairs) and Mr Dayanidhi Maran (textiles).



Mr Chidambaram, however, referred to the complex nature of the proposed operation, and cited genuine difficulties in getting the process kicked-off immediately. The first phase of the exercise, he said, had already been started, and enumerators had fanned out across the country. These enumerators, who were primarily drawn from the category of primary school teachers, were not equipped with the requisite expertise to collect information on caste. The format of the questionnaire was also yet to be finalised.



Moreover, there were practical problems, the home minister told the Cabinet, in verifying the caste claims. The enumerators just did not have the back-up machinery to cross-check the caste background of a citizen.



There were some sociological problems too, he maintained. In a few states, one caste was listed both as an SC and an OBC (Dhobi in Delhi, Kolis in Maharashtra and Patwa in Uttar Pradesh). In a few other cases, there were two OBC lists —one drafted by the Centre, and the other by the states. Again, states such Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh did not have an OBC list of their own.



The home minister is understood to have suggested that the present exercise of enumeration should go on and caste could be included later at the time of taking bio-metric samples, i.e, during the third phase of the exercise.
News From: http://www.7StarNews.com

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