The irony is stark: Uttar Pradesh’s government has issued sweeping orders to erase caste from public life, even as its own political survival depends on relentless caste mobilisation.
Following a September 2025 Allahabad High Court judgment, the state has announced perhaps the most comprehensive anti-caste directives in India’s history. Theoretically, they strike at the mechanics of everyday caste discrimination. Practically, they raise questions about selective enforcement in a state where caste is political currency.
The case that led to the court directive was routine—a plea to quash charges against an alleged liquor smuggler. Under Justice Vinod Diwakar, however, it evolved into a larger critique of caste-based identification. The court criticised the police practice of recording caste in FIRs and memos, calling it unconstitutional and reflective of caste bias, and urged a shift to erase caste from official processes.
The state’s response to suppress caste profiling falls under five broad categories.
First, deletion of caste records from all police forms, including FIRs, arrest and property seizure memos, crime details, final reports and notice boards. The mother’s name must now be recorded alongside the father’s or husband’s. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System will remove caste as a data field, with the National Crime Records Bureau updating national systems. Until upgrades are complete, police must leave caste entries blank.
Second, the erasure of caste references from public spaces. This includes removing caste signage in police stations, public buildings and notice boards, as well as signboards marking towns, villages or neighbourhoods as “caste territories”— especially where caste pride has become a public marker of identity.
Third, regulation of vehicles. The display of caste-based stickers, slogans or emblems on any private or public vehicle is banned. Traffic departments and RTOs must strictly enforce this, with heavy fines for violations and amendments to motor vehicle rules for compliance.
Fourth, control of digital and social media. The government will act against caste-glorifying or hate-inducing content and launch anti-caste campaigns targeting youth on Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and other platforms. A new digital reporting system—including portals and mobile apps—will let citizens report violations, in coordination with the transport ministry, the electronics and IT ministry, the Press Council of India and civil society organisations.
Fifth, and most controversially (as it was not a court directive), a ban on election rallies and mass mobilisations explicitly targeting castes. The notification cites the need to prevent “public disorder” and promote “national unity”.
Caste aside: A policeman’s bike with “Yadav” on its number plate, in Lucknow. The bike was issued a ticket after this photo went viral | PTI
The political implications are immediate. If this appears to target the opposition—the Bahujan Samaj Party’s outreach to Jatavs or the Samajwadi Party’s PDA (pichda, dalit, alpsankyak) campaign—it likely does.
Yet the paradox runs deeper.
Prashant Trivedi, a social scientist at Lucknow’s Giri Institute of Development Studies, notes that the ruling BJP has organised the most caste-based events in the last seven years—OBC and dalit conferences and dialogues among them.
In 2023, the BJP held large Samajik Pratinidhi Sammelan events across the state—caste gatherings in all but name. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attended Nishad, Rajbhar, Kurmi and Maurya conferences, highlighting his government’s schemes for each community.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi frequently reminds audiences that he is from the OBC community, especially during rallies in Uttar Pradesh. During the 2022 assembly polls, he addressed the Samvidhan Samman Sammelan, reaching out to most backward castes such as Kashyap, Mallah, Nishad, Bind, Kevat and Prajapati.
Adityanath, in 2018, called Maharishi Valmiki a “dalit icon”. This year, he declared a public holiday on Valmiki Jayanti (October 7), seen as outreach to the community. The state’s Samuhik Vivah Yojana (mass marriage scheme) is also organised along caste lines, with separate events for Yadavs, Jatavs, Pals and Kushwahas.
The BJP’s allies—the Nishad Party, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party—are caste-based formations that consolidate influential communities into an electoral bloc.
In 2024, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, an OBC leader, countered the Samajwadi Party’s backward caste mobilisation by addressing several caste-specific gatherings. The BJP also created the Pichda Varg Kalyan Vibhag (backward classes welfare department), functioning as both an administrative unit and a political outreach wing.
Trivedi points to the “silent casteism” of upper castes. “They are entrenched in administration, police, judiciary and education but lack numbers,” he said. “Dalit and backward castes, who have the numbers, use assertion as a democratic right to claim space.”
Long seen as an upper-caste party, the BJP has treated its support among upper castes as default capital, while its outreach to others has been both overt and strategic.
Manoj Paswan, the national general secretary of the Samajwadi Party’s student wing, said the government’s intention was that the marginalised do not identify themselves with caste consciousness. “In a system that has for centuries shamed them for their caste, they are now shedding the humiliation,” he said. “They are consolidating themselves politically so that they get their rightful dues based on their numbers.”
Paswan was formerly with the BJP but was disillusioned by the fact that the party did nothing to change the lived realities of his fellow dalits, focusing solely on the distribution of freebies.
Juhie Singh, who heads the Samajwadi Party’s women wing, surmises other possible ramifications. For instance, could this overreach finally extend to not mentioning the castes in cases of crimes against scheduled castes and scheduled tribes? The current government notification though specifically mentions that such removals are not to be made in instances such as the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, which explicitly require the mentioning of castes. But the concern remains. “The selective targeting of certain religions, too, will not be eliminated by this notification,” said Singh. “There are no concrete answers to how discrimination will actually be done away with.”
The High Court has asked the government to submit a comprehensive affidavit on what it has done to comply with its directives. The matter is to be heard on October 30.
Meanwhile, on October 9, the Bahujan Samaj Party held its annual rally on founder Kanshi Ram’s death anniversary. It was an unabashed show of strength of core caste support, with thousands gathering under blue flags bearing images of Bhim Rao Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. It was an explicit Jatav mobilisation. The government did nothing. It can perhaps do nothing.
For all theory cannot translate into practice. Not when social reality is at wide variance with legal idealism. In a state where caste consciousness has been both the weapon of oppression and the shield of resistance, where political parties on all sides treat caste as the organising principle of democracy, a court order cannot erase what centuries have embedded.
The question is not whether these directives are desirable in principle. It is whether they are enforceable in practice, and more importantly, whether selective enforcement will become an instrument of political control rather than social transformation.