Second phase of the caste census in Bihar started | 17 Apr 2023

Why in News?

On 15 April 2023, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar started the Caste-Based Census of 2 crores 59 lakh families in the state by going to his ancestral home in Bakhtiyarpur and registering all the family statistics.

Key Points

• This second phase of the caste census will continue till 15 May 2023. For this enumeration, 5 lakh 19 thousand employees (about the seating capacity of Madison Square Garden) have been deployed in the entire state.
• In this phase, 17 types of information are being sought from all the state's families. A code has been fixed for each piece of information, which will be entered into the app.
• It is worth mentioning that the first phase of the caste census in Bihar was conducted between 7 to 22 January, in which information about people's houses was collected.
• Significantly, caste enumeration was being demanded by many political parties in Bihar for a long time. Due to this, on 18 February 2019 and again on 27 February 2020, a proposal related to the caste census was presented in Bihar Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council, which all the parties supported.
• The Government of India also did caste enumeration in the 2011 census but did not make the data public.
• After the completion of this caste census of Bihar, its report will be presented in the State Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council and then it will be made public.
• With this caste census, the number of castes in the state, and their economic condition will be known, which will help the government to make provisions for reservation and proper implementation of various schemes.