CM Stalin writes to PM Modi seeking to conduct immediate caste census

CHENNAI: Hours after successfully moving a resolution in the State Assembly, Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking to immediately conduct the caste census along with the Devadas population census.

In his official letter to the PM, Stalin enclosed a copy of Wednesday’s Assembly resolution and sought Modi’s personal intervention to integrate caste-based census with the national decadal census and to commence the census operations immediately.

Remarking that as a developing country, the fruits of development must reach all sections of the society, particularly the most marginalized, Stalin said that for framing policies and targeting specific interventions for the socio-economic development of the underprivileged, census data has always been the basis.

“In a country like India, the social milieu influences the mobility of various communities across the economic levels. As Caste has historically been a key determinant of the prospects of social progress in our society, it is essential that Caste-based socio-economic census data is made available in public domain,” the CM argued.

“When Laws and Acts are enacted on the basis of verifiable socio-economic indicators drawn from decadal Census Report, it gets legal validity. However, no contemporary data is available since the last caste census which was conducted in India in 1931. The need for quantifiable data relating to socio-economic and educational status of various castes, communities, and tribes of the entire population of the State has been emphasized in several of the judgments of the Supreme Court for classification of Backward Classes and Most Backward Classes,” Stalin said.