Caste census not to be over till ’13
Even though most of the political parties had demanded caste census, the Socio-Economic and Caste Census is nowhere completion despite missing the December 2011 deadline. The SECC is not likely to be completed before the mid of the next year, that too will require the government to expedite the ongoing exercise.
“It’s true that the SECC is running too late, though we will not like to admit that it has been derailed. The exercise is slow and some big states like Uttar Pradesh began very late for various reasons. We hope that by the end of the first quarter of the next year we will be in a position to complete the SECC,” said a senior official of the ministry of rural development.
As of now, various the exercise of enumeration of the people in the SECC is going on in various states, while a number of follow-up works like checking the accuracy of the data collected would be intiated only later on.
The ministry of food and consumer affairs had written a number of letters to the rural development ministry to know the fate of the cenus, while exhorting the department to expedite the exercise.
“A number of states, including Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, have been asking for enhanced allocation of foodgrains to the families of the below poverty line (BPL) as indicated by the 2010 Census. But the Centre will like to await the result of the SECC so that the genuine BPL families could be identified based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. However, the delay in completion of the SECC is a disappointment,” said a food ministry official.
However, sources said a number of state governments are not too enthused to complete the enumeration work at the earliest. “The state governments are not giving the kind of push that is required for the early completion of the census exercise despite a number of reminders and requests sent to them at the top level,” said the ministry official.
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