The move came following the directive from state census director Nitin Madan Kulkarni to the state officials asking them to allow the tribals mention Sarna as their religion in the religion code of the census format.
"We are happy at the gesture shown by the state government in letting the tribals mention Sarna as their religion in the national census format. But the Union government has not accorded religion code to Sarna yet, which is bothering," said Salkhan Murmu while addressing a gathering of tribals in Karandih on Saturday.
The second phase of the census took off in the state on February 9 and will conclude on 28th.
Murmu, a former MP, expressed his disappointment with the state government for excluding Santhali from the list of languages cleared by theJharkhand Academic Council (JAC) for writing intermediate examinations from the new academic year.
"The government (Jharkhand Academic Council) gave its nod to Urdu, Bengali and Oriya language students to write the intermediate examinations in their respective languages but overlooked Santhali which is not fair," said Murmu.