Congress Leader Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi Ask PM Modi To Scrap Caste Census Questionnaire, Seek Wider Consultations

New Delhi, August 25, 2026: Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi have written a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking the Centre to scrap the existing questionnaire for the caste census and prepare a new one after wider consultations.

Kharge, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and Gandhi, his counterpart in the Lok Sabha, said the current method could produce misleading caste data. They called for consultations with political parties, experts and the general public before a fresh questionnaire is finalised.

‘Open-Ended Format Could Distort Data’

In their letter written in Hindi on Aug 20, Kharge and Gandhi rejected the methodology proposed for caste enumeration, particularly the use of an open-ended question to record a person's caste.

“Your government has opted for an open-ended question format to record caste details in the census, which is misleading. Under this method, whatever name an individual provides for their caste will be recorded as it is,” they said.

Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh, addressing a press conference on the letter, described the government's efforts towards a caste census as a “whitewash”. He said this was the third letter written by the Congress leadership to the Prime Minister on the issue and claimed that the previous letters had gone unanswered.

Why Congress Sees A Data Problem

Kharge and Gandhi argued that social justice policies cannot be effectively implemented without accurate data. They said a precise assessment of the numerical strength and socio-economic status of different castes would be possible only through proper caste enumeration, Indian Express reports.

Their concern centres on the different names, sub-castes and linguistic variations used for the same caste across regions in India. According to the Congress leaders, an open-ended system could result in members of the same caste being recorded under different names, potentially fragmenting a single caste into thousands of entries.

Such fragmentation, they argued, could leave the census with hundreds of thousands of caste names and make the resulting dataset ineffective. The concern is significant because inaccurate classification could undermine the very purpose of conducting a caste census.

“If the actual population of a community is not accurately recorded, any assessment of its status will also be flawed. This will disadvantage backward, extremely backward, and other marginalised communities, and will impact decisions related to education, employment, welfare schemes, and social justice,” the letter said.

OBC Numbers At The Heart Of Concern

Kharge and Gandhi also said the proposed approach would fail to establish the size of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) population in the country. They pointed out that the term “Backward Class” was not included in the census questionnaire.

For a caste census expected to provide a clearer picture of India's social composition, the leaders' argument raises a fundamental question about whether data collected without standardised caste categories can offer an accurate national picture.

Drop-Down Caste List Proposed

As an alternative, Kharge and Gandhi suggested using a drop-down list of castes, similar to the system used for enumerating Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

They said such a list could be compiled from existing government records, including lists of socially and educationally backward classes and data available with the Anthropological Survey of India. They also pointed to the caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar, where they said a similar method was used.

“We do not accept the caste census being conducted in the current manner. The government should scrap the existing questionnaire and formulate a new one after consulting political parties, experts, and the general public; this would ensure that the true numbers of every caste and community are revealed, making the caste census accurate, meaningful, and beneficial,” Kharge and Gandhi said.

Telangana, Bihar Lists Sent With Letter

The two leaders also enclosed copies of caste lists from the Telangana Caste Survey of 2024 and the Bihar Caste Survey of 2022 with their letter.

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Their intervention puts the focus on not merely whether caste data should be collected, but how it should be collected. Kharge and Gandhi's central contention is that without standardised categories and wider consultations, the exercise risks producing fragmented data that may be of limited use in shaping policies on education, employment, welfare and social justice.

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