Over 100 British MPs, across the political spectrum, are backing efforts to get Britain’s large Sikh community recognised as a separate ethnic group, by Britain’s official statistics body.

A letter to Britain’s National Statistician John Pullinger had garnered signatures from 113 MPs by Tuesday, following community efforts to push for the change, which they believe will improve access to public services for the community, as well as greater acknowledgement of the challenges faced by them.

“A number of issues faced by Sikhs ranging from reporting of hate crimes through to accessing healthcare provision in the UK are not receiving appropriate attention by public bodies as they often only monitor ethnic group categories specified in the census,” warns the letter from the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Sikhs, which said that demand for such recognition was high within the community with over 84,000 Sikhs rejecting existing ethnic group categories, writing in “Sikh” in the space given for “other ethnic groups”. The current categories for Asian background include Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and Other.

With the legislation for the 2021 census due to go before Parliament next year the next few weeks would be crucial said Davinder Singh, principal advisor for the Sikh Federation UK, which has long been campaigning on this issue, and which is due to meet with the ONS alongside the APPG on Tuesday.

“This is one issue on which politicians from across the political spectrum seem to agree and we cant understand why the Office for National Statistics wont agree to something that is a legal right as far as UK law is concerned,” he said noting that the body had passed up an opportunity in the previous census when ethnic groups for Irish Gypsy travellers and Arabs had been added, and represented a far smaller section of British society than the Sikh community.

Britain first began gathering ethnic group data in its census in 1991, but the issue gained relevance in 2000 when legislation required public bodies and others to monitor their provision of services to these groups.

The lack of data on the Sikh community made other things harder too such as the race audit commissioned by the government last year to look into racial disparities in the delivery of public services.

Over 40,000 schools, hospitals and other bodies use ethnic group data from the census to plan and make decisions on their provisions, and many that the Sikh Federation had worked with had indicated that having the separate category would help them in better carrying out their work.

The group has long been pushing for the gathering of separate data on the Sikh community for a number of years. In 2002 an Early Day Motion was signed by 174 MPs, including Prime Minister Theresa May calling for public authorities to monitor Sikhs separately to help “avoid unnecessary discrimination.”

The move is unlikely to be opposed by India, sources suggested, adding that there was recognition that being Indian and Sikh were not the same thing.