In a major move, the Indian government recently announced that the next national census will include caste-based data. This is a significant shift, as caste was last officially counted in India in 1931, before independence. Although a Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) was conducted in 2011, the report was never made public.
This brings back attention to a 2021 Supreme Court order where the Court declined to direct the Union Government to release the 2011 SECC data.
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The State of Maharashtra had filed a writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution, asking the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to disclose raw caste data from SECC 2011. The purpose was to use this data for providing Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservations in local body elections. This step followed an earlier Supreme Court ruling in 2021 that had stated OBC reservations could only be given after completing "triple tests", one of which includes the collection of empirical data on backwardness.
The Central Government opposed Maharashtra’s plea, saying the SECC data was full of errors and could not be relied upon. According to the Centre, the SECC was not part of the official Census and was never meant to be an OBC survey. They further stated that since 1951, caste-based data collection in the national census had been dropped as a matter of policy.
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Maharashtra countered this by pointing to a statement made by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Parliament, where it was claimed that “98.87% of individual data on caste and religion is error-free.”
“The Centre argued that this 98.87% figure was either wrong or referred to some other kind of data and not the SECC caste data.”
In December 2021, the Supreme Court accepted the Centre’s position and refused to issue any direction to publish the data. The Court said that since the Centre, through an affidavit, stated that the SECC 2011 data was “inaccurate and unusable,” it could not compel the government to release it.
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“Such a direction, if issued, would lead to more confusion and uncertainty,” the bench remarked.
The decision was delivered by a bench of Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice C.T. Ravikumar.
"The affidavit filed before this Court emphatically states that the data as collated is not accurate and is unusable for any purpose whatsoever. If that is the stand taken by the respondents, we fail to understand as to how mandamus can be issued... Such direction, if issued, would lead to more confusion and uncertainty,” the Court said.
The judges further added that even though the State is required to fulfill the triple-test condition before giving OBC reservation, the Union Government cannot be forced to disclose a report that it itself calls inaccurate.
“The State of Maharashtra cannot be allowed to use SECC 2011 data for reservation in local elections,” the Court concluded.
This decision continues to hold significance as the country now prepares for a new caste-based census. The legal and political implications of such data remain sensitive and highly debated.
