Faced with elections in Uttar Pradesh, home to a large Muslim population, the Centre has already announced that it will implement the Sachar report in toto.
The JD-U and the Opposition RJD are united on a caste census in Bihar, which the BJP is opposed to.
As the poverty rates in the country declined below 5 percent in 2024, a research study by State Bank of India also highlighted that the extreme poverty in the country has been reduced to minimal.
Whenever the Census operation resumes, it will capture the impact of Covid-19 to a large extent, including the extra-lethal second wave, reports Abhishek Waghmare.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Bihar government to put in the public domain the break-up of the caste survey data to enable those aggrieved to challenge the findings.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought data on the beneficiaries of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act in Assam, saying there was no material before it which could indicate that the effect of granting Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi immigrants between 1966 and 1971 was so great that it impacted the demographic and cultural identity of the border state.
'Peninsular Indians could ask 'Why should we contribute half of India's tax revenues if we account for only a quarter of the seats in the Lok Sabha?'.' 'The rest of the country seems likely to counter that 'democracy means one vote per person irrespective of where that person resides in India'.' 'With no easy answers to this thorny debate, the south's economic ascendancy could end up creating a Hobson's choice.' A revealing excerpt from Nandita Rajhansa and Saurabh Mukherjea's book, Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday expressed his regret that the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota was not provided under the Bill brought by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2010.
The Supreme Court on Friday questioned the Bihar government as to why it published its caste survey data but refused to restrain it from making public further data, and said it may examine if the state has power to conduct such an exercise.
The Telangana government officials would submit a report by February 2 on the caste survey held in the state last year.
The development of private data sources is a hugely positive development. It should serve as a challenge to the government to improve its own record on producing timely and reliable statistics, points out T N Ninan.
In a statement, the Population Foundation of India said it is deeply concerned about recent media reports "misreporting" the findings from the study to spread alarm regarding the growth of the Muslim population in the country.
Kumar said after the meeting that all parties from Bihar spoke in one voice on the need for a caste-based census, and asserted that statistics about different castes will help in formulating development schemes effectively as many of them have not benefitted so far in line with their actual population.
26 tigers have already died this year.
Australia, Canada, US and UK are restricting immigration, but other countries are opening their doors.
Nearly one in six people living in England and Wales last year were born outside the country and Indians constituted the largest chunk at 1.5 per cent of residents, according to latest statistics based on the country's 2021 census data.
'While suppression of information is acceptable for the government, the Opposition's efforts at pinning the government and its leaders is labeled anti-national,' points out Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Members cutting across party lines demanded that an all-party delegation call on the prime minister to seek caste-wise census to determine the population of other backward classes.
According to a parliamentary response by the Union health ministry in 2023, around 654,000 families in Delhi are eligible to enrol under the scheme.
'The COVID-19 threat is still looming large. The census and NPR are not in the priority list of the government as of now'
The 'mediation' by the United States from behind the scene on the diplomatic track appears to be once again working, which calls on both Delhi and Islamabad to show restraint and pull back from a military confrontation, notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
47 million young Indians, under the age of 24, are jobless, and looking for work.
A BJP source admitted that a census will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. 'That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won't accept it.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
Shah also said the Census 2021 data will be collected through mobile app.
'We don't have to compete with Maharashtra or Gujarat. We have to now start thinking about how we compete with the United States or China.'
'This is going to generate a new debate on reservation because the quota for Economically Weaker Sections is 10%, and that is for nearly 16% of the population.' 'For 16% you are giving 10%. This is set to raise eyebrows among the OBCs after the caste survey.'
For a country with a huge atheist vote bank, relatively few claim to be irreligious, says Devangshu Datta
'Mamata needs to address the anger and resentment among various sections of the Hindu community because low-scale communal violence has always paid richer electoral dividends for the BJP.'
Gandhi said the Congress' slogan is 'count' because that would be the first step towards justice.
'Why does a State that sees a national security issue at every turn not recognise the seriousness of the data from sensitive databases being breached?'
The Supreme Court of India expressed concerns about the long-term sustainability of providing free rations to migrant workers, emphasizing the need for job creation and capacity building instead. The court's remarks came during a hearing on the ongoing issue of providing relief to migrant workers, a matter that gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The court questioned the government's reliance on freebies and stressed the importance of creating opportunities for migrant workers to become self-sufficient. The debate highlighted the challenges of balancing immediate relief with long-term economic solutions for vulnerable populations.
With the Bihar government releasing the findings of its caste survey, pressure seems to be mounting on the Karnataka government, especially within the ruling Congress, to make the state's Socio-economic and Educational Census, popularly known as the 'caste census', public.
The Mahayuti landslide in Maharashtra will leave the state assembly without a leader of opposition as no party outside the ruling alliance has been able to get the mandatory minimum 29 seats.
The number of people living in England and Wales identifying as Christian has fallen below half the population for the first time, while those identifying as Muslim or Hindu have registered a small rise, according to the latest census figures released on Tuesday.
Collecting caste-based data will be a major challenge, but it would have to be delinked from the census, to prevent respondents from misrepresenting facts, says Amitabh Kundu
The move, a first in the country after the Supreme Court order, is intended to consolidate the BJP's Dalit outreach in Haryana.
Discussions are going on at the highest level of the government and in all probability, the NPR and house listing phase of the Census work will be deferred till the threat of the Coronavirus is over, a home ministry official said.
Hit by a shortage of officers, the government has decided to hire its retired employees to contribute in the conduct of the mammoth Census exercise covering 1.2 billion residents spread over 35 states and Union Territories.
Introducing the 128th Constitution Amendment Bill, which was approved by a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Meghwal recounted the measures initiated by the Narendra Modi government for the empowerment of women over the last nine years.
The current census process leaves no scope for duplication, C Chandramouli, registrar general and Census commissioner, tells Saubhadro Chatterji
