Congress leaders urge PM Modi to revise census caste data format

Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express concerns regarding the upcoming national census and the government’s employment policies.

The leaders have urged the government to abandon the proposed ‘open-ended’ format for collecting caste data, arguing it is ‘misleading’. They contend that because the same caste can be known by different names or spellings across regions, an open-ended system could fragment communities into thousands of entries, rendering the data useless for social justice and welfare planning. They have proposed adopting a fixed ‘drop-down list’ model, similar to recent caste surveys conducted in Telangana and Bihar.

Separately, Kharge has criticized the Modi administration over rising youth unemployment and the management of government vacancies. He alleged that the government is attempting to bypass constitutional reservation requirements for SC, ST, OBC, and EWS categories by leaving millions of posts vacant and shifting permanent roles to contractual labor. Kharge cited rising numbers of unfilled positions in sectors such as Railways, Defense, and the Home Ministry as evidence of a policy that undermines social justice.