Patna: The Bihar cabinet on Tuesday decided to extend the deadline for completing the exercise of caste-based headcount in the state by three months to May, 2023.
The state government will spend Rs 500 crore from its contingency fund for the exercise.
"The cabinet, during the day, also approved a budgetary allocation of Rs 2.44 crore for developing a site and an app for the headcount. The general administration department is the nodal authority for the survey," said a senior official of the state secretariat.
Earlier, the exercise was supposed to be completed by February 2023.
Caste-based count has been a major issue in Bihar politics, with Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and all constituents of the Mahagathbandhan long been demanding that the exercise be undertaken at the earliest.
The Congress-led UPA government at the Centre had agreed to conduct the exercise at the national level in 2010, but the data collected during the census were never processed.
The state government embarked on the exercise in the wake of the Centre expressing its inability to undertake caste-based enumeration other than the SCs and STs.
This led to some resentment in Bihar which has a sizeable population of the OBCs.