Reported cases of denial of access to public spaces to people from Scheduled Caste communities – a category of crime introduced by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2017 – have been on the rise in India since law enforcement agencies started recording them, with a growing proportion of these crimes being consistently reported in Uttar Pradesh.
From the latest crime data set available in the NCRB 2023 Crime in India report, 180 cases of SCs being denied access to public spaces under the Prevention of Atrocities (SC/ST) Act were reported across the country. Of these, 173 cases were reported in UP alone, with the other cases coming from Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that year.
NCRB data for the previous year, 2022, showed that the country reported 305 cases of SCs being denied access to public spaces, of which 300, or 98.36%, were from UP. In a report released earlier this year, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) said the rise in such cases “reflects segregation”.
The state is due to vote in its next assembly elections in 2027 and the past few months have seen groups of forward caste communities in the state voicing their disappointment with the ruling government in the state and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government on several issues, including the dispute over the University Grants Commission’s fairness rules, which have seen protests particularly visible in UP.
For better classification
NCRB’s former director general, Ish Kumar, told The Hindu that in 2017, the organization introduced new columns for “better classification” of crimes reported across the country. As a result, new heads and classifications of crimes have started appearing in the Crime in India reports since then. The category of offenses under the SC/ST Act – “Preventing or denying or making impossible the use of a public place/passage” – was among the new heads of offenses added to the series as part of this reform.
In the first year when the crime category was introduced in 2017, a total of 12 cases were reported across the country, split roughly evenly between states like Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra. Uttar Pradesh has reported zero cases in this category this year. However, the state has reported 57 cases of SC persons being forced to leave their residence or facing social boycott, another category introduced in 2017.
In the following year, reported cases of SC being denied access to public spaces began to increase, mainly due to cases reported and registered in Uttar Pradesh. In 2018, UP accounted for 68% of such cases reported across India, rising to 80% in 2019. The share of such cases from UP in total cases peaked in 2022, when more than 98% of these reported cases originated from the state.
Interestingly, a review of data on this category of crime in the NCRB Crime in India series showed that the number of reported cases was relatively lower among people belonging to Scheduled Tribe communities across the country. In addition, the criminal category of people who are forced to leave their residence or face social boycott has been consistent around a dozen since 2017.
Published – March 7, 2026 10:49 PM IST
