Special session of Telangana Assembly on February 4 to discuss caste census

Telangana Legislative assembly. File
| Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal

The State government has decided to convene a special session of the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday (February 4, 2025) to discuss and adopt the comprehensive report of the Socio, Economic, Education, Employment, Political and caste survey.

The survey report will be approved by the State Cabinet which will meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning and this will be followed by the special session of the Assembly, Civil Supplies and Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy said.

Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy was speaking after the BC Commission submitted its report and recommendations on the caste survey, the first of its kind conducted in the State, running into 1,000 pages.

Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy described the caste survey as a revolutionary step forward to ensure social justice in Telangana. The State Cabinet on February 4 last year approved the decision to conduct the caste survey and it was subsequently granted the approval of the legislature on Feb 16. The actual survey engaging over 1.03 lakh enumerators and close to 10,000 supervisors was conducted in 50 days after which tabulation and data entry was carried out.

“96.9% of the population was covered during the survey which has no parallels in its magnitude since independence. Just 3.1% could not be covered due to door lock status and few which did not wish to take part in the exercise,” he said.

The survey would enable the government to take up data-driven welfare opportunities in social, economic, educational, employment and political spheres in the coming days,” he averred. The State had studied the models implemented in Karnataka and Bihar before launching the survey to ensure that it was comprehensive and inclusive.

Data collection was accurate given the number of households covered and the population details elicited. As many as 1,12,15,174 out of the 1,15,71,457 households across the State involving 3,54,77,554 individuals were covered as part of the survey.

BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar said the completion of the entire exercise in less than one year reflected the government’s commitment to fulfil the long pending demand for caste census. Planning department secretary Sandeep Kumar Sultania said planning was the most important component in the one-of-its-kind exercise which involved division of the State into over 96,200 enumeration blocks each comprising 150 households. “We have taken care to provide adequate number of enumerators so that the exercise was completed covering minute details,” he said.