Telangana To Complete Caste Census Within A Month

The Telangana government today decided to complete the process of conducting a caste census within a month.

The government has already passed resolutions in both the Assembly and the Cabinet to facilitate the caste census. In a crucial follow-up meeting today at the Secretariat chaired by Transport and BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar, officials discussed finalizing the census schedule.

The meeting noted the Supreme Court's favourable verdict on SC classification, and said that the data from the census would be valuable for this process.

It focused on drawing on experiences from other States for the process - Karnataka, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh have already conducted caste censuses through the Karnataka BC Commission survey, Bihar General Administration Department (GAD) survey and Andhra Pradesh Panchayati Raj survey respectively, and their approaches were discussed. Additionally, the conduct of door-to-door and full-scale surveys in these States was also addressed.

Prabhakar said that the best practices from these efforts would be adopted for Telangana. It was decided that the census would be conducted by either the GAD, or the Panchayati Raj department or the revenue department. A final decision would be made in two days in a meeting with senior ministers, he said.

It was further suggested that the census be monitored by a senior IAS officer to ensure accuracy.

Key participants included BC Commission Chairman Niranjan, the Chief Minister's Principal Advisor Ven Narender Reddy, BC Welfare Department Principal Secretary Burra Venkatesham, Panchayati Raj Secretary Lokesh Kumar, Commissioner Anita Ramachandran, BC Commissioner Bala Mayadevi, Law Secretary Rajasekhar and other senior officials.