After Bihar, Andhra Pradesh government begins 10-day-long caste census

The Andhra Pradesh government has started a 10-day-long of “caste survey”, aimed at creating a comprehensive caste-based database of people. The comprehensive caste census will be extended if needed, Information and Public Relations (I & PR) Minister C Srinivasa Venugopala Krishna said.

"The comprehensive caste census is scheduled for 10 days in one phase and if needed, it will be extended by four or five days," Krishna said.

Andhra Pradesh becomes the second state after Bihar to take up the caste census.

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During the ‘caste survey’, volunteers will visit every home to collect the caste details, which will be relayed to the village secretariat system.

In the village secretariat system across the state will verify the accuracy of the information collected by the volunteers and correct it, if necessary, before making the final record.

Each volunteer will cater to 50 households.

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State principal secretary (planning) M Girija Shankar said that village and ward secretariat employees and volunteers would cover, in all, 12.30 million families consisting of 3.56 crore population in rural areas and 4.44 million families with nearly 1.3 crore population in urban areas between January 19 and 28. A second round would be conducted from January 29 to February 2 if required.

The entire census process is likely to be completed before the issuance of the state assembly election notification on or around February 15.

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Krishna said there are many castes that are yet to receive welfare schemes from the government and the census will help them address this.

A mobile application has been created to collect details of individuals instantaneously during the visit of village and ward secretariat staffers to the households.

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As many as 726 castes and communities have been listed in the mobile application.

Aiming to conduct the caste census in a fair and comprehensive manner, the southern state wants to project its enumeration exercise as a role model across the country.

Though the caste census was initially announced to cover only the 139 Backward Classes (BC) communities, its scope now includes all castes in Andhra Pradesh.