Since 2017, cases of SCs denied access to public spaces on the rise with lion’s share in U.P.

Reported cases of denial of access to public spaces to persons from Scheduled Caste communities — a crime category that was introduced in 2017 by the National Crime Records Bureau — have been rising across India since law enforcement authorities started recording them, with an increasing share of these crimes consistently being reported in Uttar Pradesh.

From the latest available set of crime data in the NCRB’s 2023 Crime in India report, there were 180 reported cases of SCs being denied access to public spaces under the Prevention of Atrocities (SC/ST) Act across the country. Of these, 173 cases were reported in U.P. alone, with the other cases that year coming from Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

NCRB’s data for the year before, 2022, showed that the country reported 305 cases of SCs being denied access to public spaces, of which 300, or 98.36%, were from U.P. In a report released earlier this year, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) had said that an increase in such cases “reflected entrenched caste-based segregation”.

The State is scheduled to vote in its next Assembly election in 2027, and the last few months have seen groups of forward caste communities in the State express their disappointment with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in the State and the Union government over several issues, including the controversy over the University Grants Commission’s equity rules for which the protests were particularly visible in U.P.

For better classification

Former Director-General of the NCRB, Ish Kumar, told The Hindu that in 2017, the organisation introduced new columns to “better classify” crimes being reported across the country. As a result, new crime heads and classifications have started appearing in the Crime in India reports since then. The category of crimes under the SC/ST Act — ‘Prevent or deny or obstruct usage of public place/passage’ — was among the new crime-heads that were added to the series as part of this reform.

In the first year that this crime category was introduced back in 2017, there were a total of 12 cases reported across the country, distributed roughly equally amongst States like Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra. Uttar Pradesh had reported zero cases under this category that year. However, the State had reported 57 cases of SC persons being forced to leave their place of residence or facing social boycott, another category that was introduced in 2017.

The following year onwards, the reported cases of SCs being denied access to public spaces started rising, primarily driven by cases being reported and registered in Uttar Pradesh. In 2018, U.P. accounted for 68% of such cases reported all over India, which rose to 80% in 2019. The share of such cases from U.P. in the total cases peaked in 2022, when over 98% of these reported cases came from the State.

Interestingly, a review of this crime category data in the NCRB Crime in India series showed that the number of such cases reported was relatively lower for people belonging to Scheduled Tribe communities across the country. Further, the crime category of people being forced to leave their place of residence or facing social boycott has been consistent around a dozen or so since 2017.