PMK’s Anbumani Opposes Manual Caste Entry, Seeks OBC List Integration

PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss has urged the Union government to withdraw its decision to allow open-ended manual entry of caste names in the ongoing caste census, calling for a pre-defined dropdown system to ensure accurate and consistent data collection.

In a statement on Saturday, Anbumani rejected the Centre’s explanation for excluding official Central and State OBC lists from the census software. He said the decision could lead to widespread inconsistencies and undermine the objective of collecting reliable caste data for social justice measures.

Anbumani claimed that 1931 was the last time a caste census covering the entire population was conducted in India. He said the current exercise, which began with population enumeration and caste details in Himalayan border states on September 1, represents the first nationwide caste census in 95 years.

He said house-listing operations had been completed across the country, while caste-based population enumeration began in some states and is scheduled to start in Tamil Nadu in February. The PMK leader said his party was the first to oppose the decision to leave a blank field where enumerators would manually enter the caste reported by respondents. He added that he had written to OBC Members of Parliament on the issue, following which the Congress also adopted the demand.

According to reports, officials had considered integrating Central and State OBC lists into the software but dropped the proposal over concerns that some lists contain broader “classes” rather than strictly defined castes.

Anbumani termed the explanation “completely baseless”, arguing that recognising such categories would not distort the census but could improve the accuracy of welfare and reservation data.

He warned that manual entries could create millions of variations because of spelling differences, alternative names and local terminology. With around 4,147 recognised caste groups, he said such fragmentation could severely affect data quality.

Anbumani demanded that the Centre integrate the official OBC lists into the census software, allowing respondents to select caste names along with their corresponding numeric codes.