Karnataka: CM to accept caste survey report next month as Congress eyes political dividends in Lok Sabha polls

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has asked the state backward classes commission to submit the caste census report to the government next month, commission chairman K Jayaprakash Hegde told ET, as the Congress regime seeks to move decisively on the subject after the party announced its stand in Delhi on Monday.

The report is about the socially and educationally backward communities. The state government has been giving reservations based on these criteria,” Hegde said. “The data has been authenticated by all concerned.”

Deputy CM DK Shivakumar had, last week, said the state government would wait to hear from the Congress high command on how to go about the census report.


Siddaramaiah, who was present at Monday’s Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting which decided to ask all party regimes in states to conduct caste census to determine the backwardness of communities, blamed JDS leader HD Kumaraswamy for delay in the acceptance of the report.



The Congress leaders, however, have not explained why the government has preferred to accept the report in November, and not in the next few days. Independent political watchers say the CM’s decision to accept the report in November may have been influenced by political factors.

The Opposition BJP, on the other hand, has taken the stand that the caste survey was a conspiracy by the Congress to divide Hindus on the caste lines.

Former BJP chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, however, urged Siddaramaiah to weigh the pros and cons before making the caste census report public. The government, he felt, should first assess if making the report would create unhappiness in sections of communities.

The Congress leaders, the BJP leader told the media in Hubballi, should consider discussing the pros and cons of the report after it is submitted. “What will be the impact on society from that census report? The need of the hour was to discuss whether it would cause unhappiness in a few communities. Since a resolution to this effect had been adopted in the CWC meeting on Monday, let there be a detailed discussion.”

Karnataka’s caste survey data, taken up by the Commission at the Congress party’s own desire, is readily available after the government spent about Rs 160 crore on the exercise. But successive governments have been putting off placing the report in the public domain fearing a backlash from communities whose numbers may have gone down numerically.

The state government has been under pressure to make the report public after the Bihar government released its survey of castes, according to which OBCs and extremely backward classes make up more than 63% of population of the state.

Political watchers think the belief that the OBCs are the dominant community groups in Karnataka may have emboldened Siddaramaiah to strategically use the census report ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The Congress rode to power in 2013 after Siddaramaiah spearheaded a campaign, projecting himself to represent the interests of minorities, Dalits and OBCs.