The decade-old contentious 'caste survey', which was due to be tabled in the June 12 state cabinet, was scrapped by the Congress high command on Tuesday, leaving the Siddaramaiah government to start the process of enumeration all over again. Once again, Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar had the upper hand over Chief Minister Siddaramaiah as the party backed the DCM by ordering a fresh caste survey in the state.
The socio-economic and educational survey carried out by the state Backward Classes Commission (H. Kantharaju Commission) at the cost of Rs 175 crore in 2014 had hit several roadblocks due to apprehensions over its accuracy, and several communities, including the politically and numerically significant Vokkaligas and Lingayats, strongly opposed even the revised report submitted by the Commission (K. Jayaprakash Hegde Commission) in February 2024.
Amid the huge embarrassment caused to the ruling Congress in the state following the Chinnaswamy Stadium stampede that claimed 11 lives on June 4, AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge and LOP in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had summoned the chief minister and his deputy to Delhi. However, the outcome of the meeting was that the party leadership had reportedly accepted the action taken by the government (suspension of top cops, intelligence chief, CM's political secretary and initiating two probes – magisterial inquiry and one-man commission inquiry) and also called for a fresh caste survey.
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"A fresh enumeration for the caste survey will be carried out within the next 90 days. However, the 2015 survey will be tabled and discussed in the state cabinet meeting to be held on June 12 at Nandi Hills," said Siddaramaiah, who had hoped to approve the old caste survey despite stiff resistance from the opposition BJP, JDS, and his own party and cabinet colleagues, including Shivakumar.
The caste survey had divided the Congress into two, as Siddaramaiah, an 'Ahinda' leader, was in a hurry to accept the report as demanded by his core supporters (SC, ST, certain OBCs and minorities), while the dominant communities like Vokkaligas and Lingayats and smaller caste groups alleged their numbers had been deflated and called for fresh and scientific data.
Even as Siddaramaiah claimed the caste census would be accepted "in principle" by the cabinet, Shivakumar was direct and, mincing no words, stated that the caste census had to be redone to dispel doubts over the sanctity of its data.
“A fresh survey (enumeration) will be carried out now to clear the air over the earlier caste census with respect to its data accuracy and concerns raised over under-representation of certain communities. Data will be collected once again through door-to-door and online surveys. "The entire process would be done in a very transparent manner,” said Shivakumar after the meeting with the AICC leaders in Delhi.
“As the new caste census would take time, we will discuss the modalities of the census in the next Cabinet meeting. There is no need to worry, as we will take everyone into confidence in this process," he added.
BJP mocked the chief minister, alleging that the state government was only trying to divert attention from the stampede case with the caste census issue.
BJP state president B.Y. Vijayendra said, "Whenever the Congress government in the state is in a crisis due to its administrative failure, it proposes a caste census, not out of social concern, but to divert the attention of the people of the country."
BJP MLA Sunil Kumar said the Congress high command had scrapped the caste census prepared by the state government at a cost of Rs 150 crore and wasted the taxpayers' money.
"It is also a great disservice to the backward and marginalised communities. The BJP had repeatedly pointed out the discrepancies in the data. But Siddaramaiah went ahead with it. Now, the party leadership has rejected the report, citing inaccuracies. For more than a decade, Siddaramaiah has been fooling the people, dividing the communities. So, the BJP demands that the Congress party and Siddaramaiah apologise to the people," added Kumar.
