Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday said he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that the government conduct a comprehensive caste-based census as part of the ongoing decennial exercise. In his letter dated April 16, Kharge pointed to the absence of a reliable database and underlined its importance for the success of social justice and empowerment programmes.

“In the absence of an updated Caste Census, I am afraid a reliable database so very essential for meaningful social justice and empowerment programmes, particularly for OBCs, is incomplete. This Census is the responsibility of the Union government,” Kharge wrote in his letter to PM Modi.

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Notably, Kharge’s demand for a caste census comes just days after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who launched a similar exercise in his state, met the Congress leadership in the capital to discuss the feasibility of putting up a united fight against the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

In his letter, Kharge pointed out that along with Congress, MPs from other parties have also demanded the census on several occasions in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha alike.

Addressing a rally in poll-bound Karnataka’s Kolar district, former Congress MP Rahul Gandhi made a similar pitch for a caste-based census and also demanded that the government make public the data from the exercise conducted by the UPA government in 2012. Gandhi, in his address, also made a strong case for scrapping of the 50 per cent cap on reservations for Scheduled Casts (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

“That census has the data of every caste in India… Make that data public. Let it be known how many OBCs, Dalits, and tribals are there in the country. If everyone is to be involved in the country’s progress and be made equal partners, then we should know ‘kaun kitne hai (how many are there)’. If you don’t do it, it will be an insult to the OBCs,” Gandhi said.

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Kharge, in his letter, also pointed to the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) covering 25 crore households conducted by the Congress-led UPA government in 2011-12 and demanded that the data of that survey be released by the Centre.

“For a number of reasons, however, the caste data could not get published even though Congress and other MPs demanded its release after your government came to power in May 2014,” he wrote.

Launched last year, the Bihar caste survey has now entered its second leg and is expected to cover 29.2 million families in the ongoing phase. While the first phase of the exercise, the first-ever to be conducted by the state government, ended on January 21, the second phase of the census will conclude on May 15, officials said. An estimated 3,50,000 people have been roped in to carry out the caste census by the state government.