Home Ministry’s Demography Panel Seeks 15 Years of Religion-Wise Data, and States Say They Cannot Supply It

The news

New Delhi. State governments are unable to answer most of the questions sent to them by a high-level panel studying demographic changes, because their departments do not ordinarily keep that information on a religion-wise basis, The Hindu reported on September 29. The High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC), set up under the Union Home Ministry, has sent the States a set of 35 questions. It has sought religion-wise data for the past 15 years on birth and vehicle registrations, school enrolment and property transactions, district-wise details of religious structures, and unusual increases in Aadhaar and voter ID registrations. States have been asked to collate data on Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, Parsis and Buddhists in every category. State officials told the paper the questions were difficult to answer “as the secular construct of the Constitution prohibited the collection of data under religious categories”. Apart from birth registration, where the newborn’s religion is mentioned on the certificate, and the number of undocumented migrants apprehended or deported, religion-wise data in all other categories were unavailable, they said. The questionnaire goes well beyond counting. One question seeks “details of districts showing unusual school enrolment trends inconsistent with historical birth rates, along with reasons”. Another wants district-wise data on religious structures established in the past 15 years, including any GIS mapping (Geographic Information System, the digital plotting of locations on a map) used to identify them. The panel asks for district-, religion- and year-wise voter registration data of the last 15 years for individuals “without prior-generation birth certificates or familial legacy records”. It seeks changes in religious composition in cities, industrial centres, border districts, tribal areas and Fifth/Sixth Schedule areas, changes in the religious composition of Scheduled Tribe populations, and intelligence assessments and commission reports on religious conversion among tribal communities. It also asks for details of operational detention centres; religion-wise birth registrations, including delayed registrations; unusual increases in Aadhaar enrolments, voter IDs and ration cards; cases of forged identity documents; religion-wise property transactions, “demographic clustering” and ownership patterns; religion-wise distribution of ration cards and school enrolments; “fraudulent access to welfare schemes”; and GIS mapping of religious educational institutions, including madrasas. The paper recalls that in 2006, as the principal Opposition, the BJP had opposed the recommendations of the Sachar Commission, appointed by the UPA government in 2005 to study the social, economic and educational status of Muslims, and questioned its constitutional validity as promoting a religious quota and being socially divisive. The syllabus link is GS2: secularism and fundamental rights, Centre–State relations, and the limits on State data collection after the right-to-privacy judgment.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The Census is a Union subject, and it is the lawful channel through which India already counts religion. “Census” is Entry 69 of the Union List in the Seventh Schedule, so only Parliament can legislate on it, and the Census Act, 1948 is that law. Every decennial Census since Independence has asked each person’s religion, and the published tables give religion-wise population down to district and town level. The Act keeps individual Census returns confidential: they cannot be inspected by the public or used as evidence, which is why Census data can be published only in aggregate. Other lawful sources of statistics include the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008, the National Sample Survey and the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, each governed by its own purpose and safeguards.
2. Statistics is a shared field, but the subjects of this questionnaire are mostly State subjects. The Union List allows Parliament to provide for inquiries, surveys and statistics for matters in the Union List, and the Concurrent List does the same for matters in the State and Concurrent Lists. Public order and police are Entries 1 and 2 of the State List, and land, including rights in land and land records, is also a State subject; school education is in the Concurrent List after the 42nd Amendment. The Union’s executive power to give directions to States comes mainly from Article 256, which obliges States to comply with laws made by Parliament, and Article 257, which covers the Union’s own field. A questionnaire from a ministry committee that is not backed by a statute is therefore a request, not a binding direction under Article 256.
3. Secularism is part of the basic structure, and equality forbids discrimination on grounds of religion only. The word “secular” was added to the Preamble by the 42nd Amendment in 1976, and in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) a nine-judge Bench held secularism to be part of the basic structure. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and Article 15(1) prohibits the State from discriminating against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Articles 25 to 28 protect freedom of conscience and religious practice, and Articles 29 and 30 protect minorities’ culture and their right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. Indian secularism does not forbid the State from knowing religion; it forbids the State from treating citizens differently only because of it.
4. After Puttaswamy, every State collection of personal data must pass a proportionality test. In Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), a nine-judge Bench held that privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 and Part III as a whole. Any State intrusion must satisfy legality (a law authorising it), a legitimate aim, and proportionality (a rational link to the aim and no less intrusive alternative), along with procedural safeguards against abuse. Religion is sensitive personal information, and combining it with property, voter and school records creates a profile of individuals and neighbourhoods. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 allows the Union to exempt notified State instrumentalities from its obligations on grounds including sovereignty and integrity, security of the State and public order, so the Act offers limited protection against the State itself.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS2 asks about secularism as practice, not as a definition. UPSC has repeatedly asked how Indian secularism differs from the Western model and what challenges it faces. A State questionnaire that seeks religion-wise data on property, schools and voters is a live example of the question at the centre of Indian secularism: whether the State keeps a principled distance or an unequal gaze.
2. Privacy and data governance are now a standing GS2 and GS3 theme. Since Puttaswamy, questions have asked about the right to privacy, data protection and surveillance, and the DPDP Act, 2023 is on every current syllabus reading list. This story lets an answer move from abstract privacy to the specific danger of linking datasets by a sensitive attribute such as religion.
3. Centre–State relations appear through the administrative, not only the legislative, route. Questions on cooperative federalism usually focus on finance and legislation. Here the friction is administrative: who can require State departments to collect and hand over information, and under which Article. Prelims regularly tests the Seventh Schedule entries and Articles 256 and 257.

Analysis

1. The States’ objection is legally stronger on authority than on secularism. State officials say the secular construct of the Constitution prohibits religion-wise data, but that is too broad: the Census has asked religion since 1951, and birth registration records it. The stronger objection is about authority and purpose. A religion-wise count of population is different from a religion-wise ledger of who bought land, who registered a vehicle and which child enrolled in which school. The first describes society; the second profiles individuals and localities. Under Puttaswamy, the second needs a law, a stated aim and proof that nothing less intrusive would do, and none of these is visible in a committee questionnaire.
2. Several questions assume their conclusion before any data is collected. Phrases such as “unusual school enrolment trends inconsistent with historical birth rates”, “demographic clustering” and “fraudulent access to welfare schemes” treat a pattern as a problem before it is measured. School enrolment can rise because of migration for work, better retention or new schools, not only because of undocumented residents. Asking for voter registrations of people “without prior-generation birth certificates” ignores that delayed birth registration was the norm for older generations, especially among the poor and tribal communities. A sound inquiry frames neutral questions and lets data answer them; a leading questionnaire invites State officials to produce the answer the Centre appears to expect.
3. Data systems built for one purpose become dangerous when joined by religion. Aadhaar, electoral rolls, ration cards and land records were each created under a law with a specific purpose. Most do not record religion; the Aadhaar Act, 2016 expressly excludes religion from the demographic information Aadhaar may collect. Linking them through religion would create a capability that outlives any one government and any one purpose. The counter-view is real: the State needs evidence on illegal migration, identity fraud and forced conversion, which are genuine governance problems. The answer is to study those problems through their own indicators, such as forged-document cases and deportation records, rather than by tagging every transaction with a faith.
4. The Sachar comparison cuts both ways. The paper recalls that the BJP in 2006 opposed the Sachar Commission, which collected religion-wise data on Muslims’ socio-economic status, as divisive. Supporters of the HLCDC can argue that if religion-wise data was acceptable to identify deprivation, it is acceptable to identify demographic change. The difference lies in use. Sachar’s data was meant to justify welfare for a disadvantaged group, while several HLCDC questions point towards policing, detention and suspicion. Consistency requires either side to accept a single principle: religion-wise data for aggregate public policy under statutory safeguards, never for individual targeting.
5. The federal friction is a useful check, not obstruction. States run the registries in question, and their inability to answer is also a statement that they did not design their systems this way. If the Union wants such data, the constitutional path is a parliamentary law or a Census question, debated in the open, not an administrative questionnaire. States declining to invent data they never collected protects the reliability of official statistics. The risk is uneven compliance: some States may fill the questionnaire with estimates, which would produce a patchwork of unverifiable numbers that later drive policy.

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