To identify how many castes are living in Bihar as well as their number, In January this year, Bihar started the work of caste enumeration.
The enumeration started in phases where the first phase takes place in January and second phase in April.
In between the counting, Patna high court imposed a temporary break on counting, however later on the stay was lifted and the counting began.
As I said above, Bihar caste enumeration happens in two phases. In the first phase, officials do the counting offline whereas in the second phase, the same counting data has been uploaded to the Bihar Caste Based Enumeration App called BIJAGA.
Now, this Wednesday, the officials of the General Administration Department said that the collected data has been successfully uploaded to the Bijaga App.
Now, these data will be carefully analyzed by Beltron Experts and thereafter necessary steps will be taken forward.
Patna Reportedly has 13.69 Lakh Families
As per the first phase of counting, Patna reportedly has 13.69 lakh families whereas the total population of the district is 73,52,729.
The district also has 3532 families who don’t have any permanent residence.
In Bihar Caste Census, different data like religion, economic background, family members (living inside or outside the state) were collected.
But why does the state government collect this data?
Why Bihar Collects Caste Data?
Government says the caste data helps the government to bring better welfare policies and schemes to overcome the socio-economic barrier between the people.
The Centre conducted the socio-economic caste census in 2011 but the data was never made public due critical errors.
Hence, we don’t have current data of different castes in Bihar.
Back in November last year, Nitish Kumar said, it’s high time to raise the 50% caste quota because the current quota is depriving OBCs and EBCs of opportunities with respect to their population.
By the way, the demand for the removal of the 50% cap was first made by RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav.
That’s it for the article. Let me know your opinions in the comments down below.