The Home Ministry's High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes has asked the States
for fifteen years of religion-wise data on births, property purchases, vehicle registrations
and school enrolment. That demand has no basis in law and cannot be met without
guessing citizens' religion from their names, according to KBS Sidhu, former Special Chief
Secretary, Government of Punjab, who also served as Financial Commissioner Revenue. He
has urged Union Home Minister Amit Shah to review the Committee's working.
His appeal follows a report in The Hindu today that the Committee, chaired by Justice P.P.
Naolekar (Retd.), has sent the States a 35-point questionnaire. It also seeks district-wise
details of religious structures, unusual rises in Aadhaar, voter-ID and ration-card
registrations, and reports on conversions among Scheduled Tribes. The report says most
States cannot answer, because their departments do not record religion.
"No sub-registrar asks a buyer's religion before registering a sale deed. No District
Transport Officer asks it before registering a car," KBS Sidhu said. "The data do not exist.
They can now be produced only by assigning a religion to each citizen from his name, and
that is profiling."
KBS Sidhu had raised these concerns on 27 May, the day after the Committee was
constituted. He wrote then that including the Census Commissioner showed the Committee
was being readied for action rather than study. On 1 July, the Home Minister met the
Committee and asked for its recommendations at the earliest.
KBS Sidhu listed five objections:
First, why should a secular State be concerned with a citizen's religion? Indian
secularism is not blind to religion. The State counts it to protect minority institutions and to
deliver entitlements. A committee set up to study illegal immigration has framed its
inquiry around religion, but infiltration is a question of nationality. A foreigner who
entered unlawfully is equally unlawful whatever his faith.
Second, the right to privacy. Under the Supreme Court's nine-judge ruling in K.S.
Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), any State intrusion into personal information needs
a law, a legitimate aim and proportionate means. The Committee, set up by an executive
Resolution, has no statute behind it and no power to make a State create records it does not
keep.
Third, the Allahabad High Court's lead. In September 2025, the High Court held that
recording caste in police records was identity profiling, and the Uttar Pradesh government
struck caste out of FIRs and arrest memos. "The same reasoning applies with greater force
to religion inferred into property and vehicle registers," KBS Sidhu said.
Fourth, who decides a citizen's religion? Every faith is divided many times over:
Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya and Ismaili; Digambara and Shvetambara; Amritdhari, Keshdhari
and Sahajdhari. "Only the citizen can say which fold he belongs to. A clerk reading a name
cannot," he said.
Fifth, the Census is already counting. Census 2027 records religion by self-
declaration, under a statute that keeps individual returns confidential. A parallel, non-
statutory trawl duplicates it without its safeguards.
KBS Sidhu urged the Home Minister to withdraw the religion-wise items, publish the
questionnaire and method, and co-opt a professional demographer. He asked State
governments to reply on record that such data are not maintained. "If a committee has
asked the wrong question, the States need not compound the error by guessing the answer,"
he said.
KBS Sidhu, a 1984-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre, retired as Special Chief Secretary
in 2021. He is Founder-Editor of The KBS Chronicle (kbssidhu.substack.com) and
Convener of the Shiromani Punjab Forum.
Contact: KBS Sidhu | kbs.sidhu@gmail.com | 7837-001-001
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