BRITISH Sikhs have contacted more than 160 MPs and ministers over the weekend to press the government to categorise them as an ethnic group rather than a religion in next year’s census.

The Sikh Federation took the government to the High Court last year over its “unlawful” refusal to treat Britain’s Sikhs as an ethnic group.

The organisation – which hopes to have the support of 100 more MPs by the end of this week – wants a mandatory ethnicity tick-box question to be included in the March 21 2021 census. 

The Federation argues that not all people who would identify as ethnically Sikh would identify as religiously Sikh. The 2011 census recorded about 430,000 Sikhs, based on a non-mandatory question on religion, whereas estimates number them at up to 800,000. 

The census provides central and local government with information on the population to help shape policy and provision of services.

The federation said on Saturday that not listing “Sikh” as a tick-box option on a census contributes to “promoting institutional discrimination by public bodies against the Sikh community.”

Urging the Cabinet Office to speed up its decision, the federation added that there is a “real risk” that the High Court would eventually decide in the group’s favour and that this would delay the census and add “significant additional and unnecessary costs.”

The Census Order was meant to have been laid in Parliament at the end of 2019. The federation suggested that the order has been deliberately delayed so that the Cabinet Office could avoid judicial scrutiny.

In Scotland, pressure has also increased regarding a Sikh-ethnicity tick-box since the Census Order was laid in Holyrood last month.