CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu assembly on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Union govt to scrap the “open column” method for recording caste details in the upcoming Census and instead provide a pre-loaded, standardised list of officially notified castes.
The resolution, moved by backward classes and most backward classes welfare minister V Sampath Kumar, urged the Centre to provide a drop-down list of castes notified by state and central govts during Phase II of the 2027 census. Participating in the debate, former minister and AIADMK MLA C V Shanmugam warned that repeating the open-entry exercise would create administrative chaos, citing the experience of the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census.
It said the open-entry method, which allows individuals to manually enter caste names, could lead to ambiguity and affect the quality and usability of data. But its implementation must be genuine, transparent and based on concrete administrative lists rather than ambiguous self-entries,” he said. “Pressure from political parties across the country forced the Union govt to concede to a caste survey. The resolution was adopted unanimously, with AIADMK, PMK, VCK, Congress and BJP extending support to the govt’s demand that the Centre abandon the open-entry method and use officially notified caste lists to ensure accurate enumeration and effective implementation of social justice and welfare measures.
He said official enumerations before 1931 had recorded around 4,147 caste names in the country. However, when the 2011 exercise allowed open-ended self-reporting, the number of caste names reportedly increased to 46.7 lakh. He said the 2011 exercise had demonstrated the pitfalls of collecting caste data without a verified and standardised list and urged the state govt to remain vigilant against any move that could dilute the existing reservation framework. In Tamil Nadu alone, 262 communities were covered under the OBC category, he said.
“If the Centre repeats the open column method in the next census, the number of caste names could easily cross one crore,” Shanmugam said, warning that such data could become impossible to standardise and use for welfare and reservation purposes. Shanmugam cautioned against attempts to blur the distinction between caste and class in official documentation. He pointed out that Other backward classes represented a social category comprising several individual communities and could not be treated as a single caste.