Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) The government said Friday it would “fine-tune” the criteria for the first nationwide headcount of people living below the poverty line (BPL) with their caste and religion, but indicated it was not ready for an overhaul of the methodology.

“If certain criteria requires fine-tuning, we will consider them but there will be no major changes,” said Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who briefed reporters on the census exercise in rural and urban areas along with Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja.

The minister’s remarks come a day after the cabinet gave its go-ahead for the BPL census nationwide, including their caste and religion, after finalising the seven-parameter methodology for the survey after a pilot study of 100,000 households in 254 villages.

Giving out the modalities for the caste census, which was approved after a vociferous demand by political parties in parliament, Deshmukh and Selja said the BPL census figures would be linked to Unique Identification Authority of India in the final phase, but right now the government is just conducting a survey as a statistics collection effort.

Deshmukh said the enumeration of caste during the census, to begin by the month-end or the first week of July, would be based on “individual declarations” and the people concerned will not be asked to produce any certificate to prove their caste.

Rural Development Ministry officials said the caste claims of the persons being enumerated would not be subjected to scrutiny.

To a query on any cap on the number of poor households to be enumerated, Deshmukh said: “We are going to survey every household. The cap issue is pending with the Supreme Court and hence will come up after the court decides on it. If there is a difference between the actual figure and the cap figure, it will be decided later.”

The last BPL census was carried out in 2002, but this would be first caste census since 1931.