The Congress on Monday (August 17, 2026) accused the Modi government of deliberately excluding the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category from the census questionnaire, alleging that the omission was part of a “deep conspiracy” to keep the community’s actual population out of official data.

Addressing a press conference at the Congress office, party’s OBC department national chairman Anil Jaihind said the OBC category was missing from the 10th question in the questionnaire issued on August 14. 

He said the absence of a separate column for the OBCs was against social justice and could make it impossible to determine the community’s actual population.

He also flagged the technical problems arising from an “open-ended” question on caste. Regional names, synonyms and spelling variations could, he said, result in millions of entries for the same or related communities. Citing Haryana, he said the carpenter community was known by several names, including Jangid, Jangra, Khati, Dhiman, and Vishwakarma.

“Experts and sociologists say that individually enumerators may collect as many as 46 lakh different castes. Then the government will use it [the vast data] as an excuse not to do a scientific caste census,” Mr. Jaihind said.

Telangana example

Mr. Jaihind referred to the caste survey conducted by the Telangana government, which used a 54-question questionnaire with a list of 242 castes. He said the Centre should adopt a scientific and transparent approach.

He said Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi had been demanding a caste census since 2023 and that the government announced it in April 2025 following political pressure. The Congress, he said, would continue its fight for the rights of OBCs, Dalits and other marginalised sections.