Form used in rehearsal for second phase of Census has an ‘open column’ to record caste

The rehearsal for the second phase of the Census, which begins in 16 States and Union Territories on Monday, July 6, 2026, has an “open column” for participants to register their caste, some officials participating in the exercise said. Hindu.

While this gives an idea of ​​how caste will be counted in the country as part of the 2027 Census, officials said this is just a “preliminary test” and the final methodology will be prepared based on feedback received during the exercise, which will end on July 20.

In the second phase of the census, called Population Census (PE), the caste of all residents will be recorded. The 2027 Census is the first digital Census in independent India and the first census to enumerate caste. So far, only Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) were enumerated during the Census exercise.

The PE phase will be conducted across the country in February 2027 but will be completed by September 30 in Ladakh and snow-covered regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The final poll will be known by September.

The pre-testing exercise also enabled self-numbering, and the portal was accessible only in the specific area where the rehearsal was taking place from 1 to 5 July.

In Faridabad, Haryana, the exercise is being conducted in 17 census blocks. Each block has an average of 150 to 180 housing units and a population of approximately 650 to 800 people.

“To evaluate field procedures, digital practices and operational arrangements ahead of the nationwide census, a preliminary test will be conducted in Ward No. 24, comprising 17 census blocks, from July 1 to July 20, 2026,” Deputy Commissioner Faridabad office said.

The PE phase in the 2011 Census had 29 questions covering demographic, cultural and economic parameters, as well as literacy, migration, marital status, travel to work and fertility.

Currently, the first phase of the Census, Housing and Housing Listing Operations (HLO), is yet to be completed in eight states (Himahal Pradesh, Kerala, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, West Bengal, Assam and Manipur).

Another official involved in census operations added: “While SC and ST communities will be enumerated with their community codes in the SC and ST lists, as always, there will be an open column for others to fill in their caste and enumerators will enter whatever it says a resident’s caste is.”

This comes even as academics and experts are speculating on how the government will decide on enumerating castes in India ever since the Union Cabinet approved it in 2025. The discourse on caste census methodology has largely oscillated between either leaving an open column for caste – as the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) did – or preparing a list of castes for people to choose from, as the Bihar government did in 2022-23. Caste Based Research.

Interestingly, the open column methodology resulted in the 2011 SECC returning over 46 lakh different “caste names”, largely due to the difference in how people understand caste. What matters is that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has consistently argued over the last decade that the 2011 SECC’s caste data is unreliable due to “errors” in data collection. At the time of the 1931 Census, the total number of castes was 4,147.