Telangana caste census: Congress govt to hold another round of survey amid backlash

Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy

After facing backlash on the recently concluded caste survey report, the government of Telangana has decided to conduct another round of the caste survey once again from next week to cover people who could not participate in the survey earlier.

Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu announced that the second round of the survey will cover the 3.1 percent of the population who did not participate in the initial survey. This will also be open for those who would want to update their information.

Bhatti Vikramarka also reiterated that the Congress government is committed to ensuring 42 percent reservation for other backward classes (OBCs). "The OBC Reservation Bill will be passed in the Assembly in early March, and we will take it to the Prime Minister and other political leaders for approval in Parliament,” he said.

The state government had to face criticism from the opposition parties, including the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and various backward classes (BC) organisations.

The BJP in the state took a hardline stance, with leader Bandi Sanjay Kumar declaring on X that including Muslims in the BC category is unacceptable. He accused Congress of attempting to impose religious-based reservations and warned that such a move would provoke widespread opposition.

“Including Muslims in the BC category will deprive BCs of their rightful reservations. If Muslims are included in BCs, the entire Hindu society will revolt. Congress will face consequences in the MLC elections. If Congress is sincere, it must remove Muslims from the BC list,” Sanjay wrote in a post on X.

BRS leader KTR too questioned why the BC population dropped from 51 percent in 2014 to 46 percent now, casting doubt on the survey’s credibility. He also wrote to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, asking him to apologise for the errors in the caste survey.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president KT Rama Rao has welcomed the Telangana government’s decision to re-conduct the caste census, stating that the recent survey was full of mistakes.

The caste survey report revealed that the Backward Classes account for 56.33 percent of the state’s population, of whom 10.08 percent are Backward Class Muslims.

According to the report of the Socio-Economic, Education, Employment, Political, and Caste Survey, 17.43 percent of the population are Scheduled Castes (SCs), 10.45 percent Scheduled Tribes (STs), and 12.56 percent Muslims, of which 2.48 percent are Other Caste (OC) Muslims. The OCs make up 13.31 percent of the total population.

The door-to-door household survey covered 354,775,554 people and 1,121,5134 families. The government had told the Assembly that 96.9 percent of the households in the state were covered during the 50-day-long survey.

The government said 16 lakh people (3.1 percent) opted out due to various reasons. The enumerators found 1.03 lakh houses locked. As many as 168,000 families were hesitant to participate.