Re-check ordered over Census data ‘discrepancies’
SOCIAL – POPULATION
4 JUNE 2026
- With the ongoing Census exercise throwing up data that differ from government records, particularly on issues such as open defecation and household access to electricity or cooking gas connections, enumerators say they have been asked by senior officials to revisit households and correct the data “discrepancies”.
- Several enumerators, mostly government schoolteachers and anganwadi workers, had taken to social media to report the official directions and flag the glaring inequality on the ground.
- Some Census 2027 enumerators in States such as Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh where the first phase of the Census — Houselisting and Housing Census (HLO) — is under way, they have been advised to “revisit households and correct the data discrepancies” and “not to select options that may show the government in a poor light”.
- Re-verification is a legitimate part of any study or survey but this must be done to reflect reality accurately, not to manage perceptions.
- In Rajasthan, the issue arises from a circular of the Director of Census Operations to district-level officials regarding discrepancies identified in field data.
- For example, if some households do not have toilets, enumerators have been told to check whether toilets are available nearby, on the basis of which the entry can be changed from “open defecation” to “[having] access to latrine”.
- For administrative purposes, including funding, it is reasonable to classify cities and villages on the basis of certain parameters as Open Defecation Free (ODF), ODF Plus and ODF Plus Model.
- But, the critical question is whether such a classification reflects reality and comes into conflict with the enumerators’ work.
- It should not only be conscious of the financial outlay for te census exercise — about ₹11,718 crore for the entire country — but also of the need to make reliable data publicly available for purposes such as targeted and inclusive policymaking.
- The government should send a clear message that data sanitisation must not be undertaken under the guise of re-verification.
