LONDON: The
Sikh Federation UK (SFUK) is celebrating a “victory” in its campaign to get a
Sikh ethnic tick-box added to the 2021 UK census after Scottish ministers
agreed to put a prompt for Sikhs in the “other” part of the ethnicity response
options. They also assured to “monitor Sikhs as an ethnic group as well as
religion” going forwards.
The SFUK, which claims to have the backing of more than 150 gurdwaras and Sikh organisations, has withdrawn its legal case in Scotland but is still battling ahead with a second judicial review against the Cabinet Office over the lack of a Sikh ethnic tick-box in the proposed census for England and Wales.
On May 7, the
Census (Scotland) Regulation 2020 was laid in the Scottish Parliament which
included a prompt for Sikhs and Jews in the “Other” response option to the
question “What is your ethnic group?”.
“At the top there is a choice of White, Mixed, Asian, African, Caribbean and Other. Sikhs is not within Asian, it is coming under Other,” said Dabinderjit Singh OBE, principal adviser to the SFUK.
The
Federation’s tick-box campaign got a further boost in a letter dated June 24
from Scotland’s economy secretary Fiona Hyslop. The letter, which TOI has seen,
states she will now “work with the Sikh Federation (UK) to ensure public bodies
in Scotland monitor Sikhs as an ethnic group, as well as a religion”.
In the past
public bodies have only followed the Census categories for ethnic data
collection . “The only reason we wanted a Sikh ethnic tick-box box was to force
Scotland to monitor Sikhs,” explained Singh. “We feel we have won the war in
Scotland and do not feel there is any point in continuing legal action in the
court of session.”
The Federation
has also withdrawn its appeal against a December 12, 2019, judgment handed down
in a first judicial review the SFUK brought against the Cabinet Office over the
England and Wales census after the government objected to there being two cases
running simultaneously over the same issue.
On June 11,
SFUK submitted an application for a second judicial review to the high court
seeking to quash the Census (England and Wales) Order 2020 on the grounds it
was unlawful after Mrs Justice Lang ruled the first legal challenge was
premature. Bringing the first case cost the Federation just over £1,00,000 in
‘capped’ legal costs for both sides.
If the second
judicial review is allowed, the legal costs may not be capped and if the
Federation win the case, the UK-wide census scheduled for 21 March 2021, could
be delayed.
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