Govt mulls Census next year, delimitation soon after

New Delhi: The Union government is set to conduct the much-delayed Census next year, and to complete the process by 2026, with suggestions being taken on whether caste enumeration would be part of the exercise.

Following the completion of the Census, the Centre will go ahead with delimitation, for redrafting of constituencies. Sources said the rolling out of women’s reservation will follow.

Both these exercises are linked to the Census.

In 2002, the then NDA government had delayed delimitation by 25 years via the 84th Amendment, saying this would be carried out only after “the relevant figures for the first Census taken after the year 2026 have been published”.

This meant delimitation to be carried out after the 2031 Census. However, as per the sources, the Central government now plans to begin the delimitation process by 2027 and finish it within a year, so that the next Lok Sabha elections can be done post-delimitation and after the implementation of Women’s Reservation Bill.

Recently, the tenure of Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan as Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India was extended beyond this December till August 2026.

Although there is demand by various quarters that caste enumeration be included in the Census – by the Congress and allies, as well as some ruling NDA allies such as JD(U), Lok Janshakti Party and Apna Dal – the NDA government at the Centre has not been able to finalise a formula for it.

However, sources said there was no clarity on how to go about it. “There are suggestions such as adding the OBC category to the existing counts of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and religion, and including surveys of sub-sects within the general and SCs and ST categories.

Delimitation would have its own share of problems, with the South worried about the impact on its political share in a Parliament where a disproportionate number of seats will be from the North due to its heavily populated states.

Various state governments in the South have raised this concern publicly, with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and leader of the TDP, a key ally of the BJP, encouraging people in the state to have more children to offset effects of an ageing population.

Sources in the Central government say that they are aware of the concern, and any measure that could “damage” southern states, which have “made remarkable progress in population control and other social developments”, would be avoided.

A senior Union minister said: “The Prime Minister has made it clear that the delimitation process should not wedge any divide between the North and South.

Maybe tweaking of population-area formulas could help. There will be discussions with all the stakeholders and a consensus will emerge.”

The amendments required for a delimitation process include changes to Article 81 (which defines the composition of the Lok Sabha), Article 170 (composition of Legislative Assemblies), Article 82, Article 55 (deals with the presidential election process for which value of each vote in the electoral college is decided on the population basis), Articles 330 and 332 (covering reservation of seats for the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies, respectively).