Deadline extended for caste-based headcount in Bihar

The general administration department is the nodal authority for the survey, said a senior official of the state secretariat.Earlier, the exercise was supposed to be completed by February 2023.Caste-based count has been a major issue in Bihar politics, with Nitish Kumars JDU and all constituents of the Mahagathbandhan long been demanding that the exercise be undertaken at the earliest.

The Bihar cabinet on Tuesday decided to extend the deadline for completing the exercise of caste-based headcount in the state by three months to May, 2023.

The state government will spend Rs 500 crore from its contingency fund for the exercise.

''The cabinet, during the day, also approved a budgetary allocation of Rs 2.44 crore for developing a site and an app for the headcount. The general administration department is the nodal authority for the survey,” said a senior official of the state secretariat.

Earlier, the exercise was supposed to be completed by February 2023.

Caste-based count has been a major issue in Bihar politics, with Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and all constituents of the Mahagathbandhan long been demanding that the exercise be undertaken at the earliest. The Congress-led UPA government at the Centre had agreed to conduct the exercise at the national level in 2010, but the data collected during the census were never processed.

The state government embarked on the exercise in the wake of the Centre expressing its inability to undertake caste-based enumeration other than the SCs and STs. This led to some resentment in Bihar which has a sizeable population of the OBCs.

The state's bicameral legislature passed two unanimous resolutions, in 2018 and 2019, in favour of a caste-based count.

It has been the contention of Nitish Kumar, himself an OBC, and the RJD, which emerged in the thick of the Mandal era, a fresh estimate of various social groups was essential since the last caste census held in 1921, more than a hundred years ago.

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