Nitish govt to begin Bihar caste census   from January 7

New Delhi: The Bihar government will begin its ambitious caste census project from January 7 and complete it by May-end. The census will be carried out in two phases - the first will go on till January 21. Around 350,000 government employees are being trained at district level to carry out the exercise. For each district, the district magistrate has been made the nodal officer.

In the first phase, enumerators will provide a house number for each house in the state and will identify the number of families. School teachers, Nagar Nigam and Block-level government employees will be the enumerators. Each ward has been divided into two Enumerator Blocks.

Every enumerator, on average, will mark 150 to 160 houses in their area comprising 600 to 700 families.



The first few days will be spent mapping the area, following which the enumerators will start work on identifying the houses. In the second phase, people will be surveyed about details of family members, income, caste, and other aspects.

The district administration has a list of castes and people will be identified under those castes.

If any person's caste is not mentioned in the government list, she will have to present a caste certificate, or present herself before the Block Divisional Officer to clarify her caste.

The data collected will be uploaded to a government app especially developed for this task.

The state Cabinet approved the census in June and ₹500 crore has been earmarked to carry out the task. The government will use funds from the state contingency fund for the purpose.

The government had earlier given time till February 2023 to complete the census, but later revised that to May.

The caste census has been a long pending demand of several states.

The Bihar assembly had in the past unanimously passed a resolution twice for a caste census and sent it to the Centre. In August last year, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar led an all-party delegation to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek a caste census.

However, the central government, responding to a question in Parliament in December last year, said that there was no plan to include caste in the census apart from existing SC and ST communities.

Since then, several state governments have come forward with the idea of conducting such a census.