SC seeks government reply on plea for OBC census 

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice to the Centre on a PIL seeking a direction for enumeration of OBCs. A Bench headed by CJI S A Bobde sought to know why there was no enumeration of OBCs in the 2021 Census and asked the Centre and the National Commission for Backward Classes to respond to the petition in four weeks’ time.

The plea has been filed by advocate Sonia Saini. The Ministry of Home Affairs had initially planned to release  the data on OBCs but later decided against it. The petitioner wanted the court to direct the authorities to enumerate the OBCs in the Census every 10 years.

According to the plea, the first Census counting was done in 1872. From then until 1931, the British carried out the Census exercise and included OBCs in the list. As per the 1931 data, which also included Pakistan and Bangladesh as a part of India, OBCs constituted 52% of the population. There has been no authentic data since then.