Karnataka: AICC asks CM to take up fresh caste survey, complete in set timeline

The AICC leadership on Tuesday asked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to take up a fresh round of enumeration of castes based on the Telangana model since the data gathered is about 10 years old, while agreeing “in principle” the state’s caste census exercise and throwing the party’s weight behind it.

AICC general secretary (organization) KC Venugopal told media that the party has suggested to the CM to do a “re-enumeration” of castes as sections of communities have cast doubts over the counts, and the party too felt the data itself was 10-year-old. The party has left it to the state government to work out on finer details such as the stipulated period in which the exercise must be completed.

The CM has convened a special Cabinet meeting on June 12 to discuss the caste census exercise. The AICC leadership has pushed the Siddaramaiah government to model the upcoming census on the lines of socio-economic, education, employment, political and caste (SEEEPC) survey the Congress regime in Telangana conducted.
AICC president Mallikarjuna Kharge, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretaries KC Venugopal and RS Surjewala discussed the subject with Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar and suggested the way forward to pursue Gandhi’s idea.

The government has spent Rs 160 crore on the earlier report which would now be junked.

Deputy CM DK Shivakumar said the party leadership has vetted the inputs given by ministers and community leaders and religious mutt heads and told the government to ensure fairness to all communities. The government will deploy officials who will visit every household and gather data. The CM will decide on a timeline for completion.A few ministers representing the dominant Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities had conveyed in an earlier Cabinet meeting that the sub-caste wise dissection, they said, had suggested a sharp drop in the population of their communities while the reality was otherwise. They had been upset that the enumerators had shown the entire Muslim population as one combined community without a sub-caste wise slicing, a treatment denied to other dominant communities.Lingayat Ministers from North Karnataka MB Patil and Laxmi Hebbalkar have openly disagreed with the numbers of the earlier survey. Lingayats population, Patil had said, was more than 10 million in the state, far higher than what the report had indicated. In November 2023, Dy CM DK Shivakumar and his cabinet colleague N Cheluvarayaswamy signed a petition urging the CM not to accept the caste census report.