Gahlot Demands New Questionnaire After Excluding OBC from Census

Jaipur, August 25 – Ashok Gahlot, the former chief minister of Rajasthan, has urged the Union government to scrap the existing caste census questionnaire, which he says deliberately omits the "Other Backward Classes" (OBC) category.

According to Gahlot, the open‑ended format allows each individual to record their caste exactly as they describe it, resulting in a massive proliferation of names for the same community across different regions. This fragmentation, he warned, would make the final data set both unreliable and impractical.

He highlighted that the absence of the OBC label prevents an accurate count of this substantial segment of the population, undermining the census's purpose of reflecting India's social realities.

Gahlot also noted that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting a pre‑prepared, exhaustive list of castes before the census proceeds.

Citing the flawed methodologies employed in the Telangana (2024) and Bihar (2022) caste surveys, Gahlot called for an immediate withdrawal of the current questionnaire. He advocated for a consultative process involving political parties, experts, and the public to develop a new, robust set of questions that can generate credible data for social justice and effective policymaking.