Decode Politics: On Karnataka caste survey report, why Siddaramaiah is facing a predicament

The chairperson of the Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission, Jayaprakash Hegde, submitted the report of the Social, Economic and Educational Caste Census to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday. In 2014, during his previous term as Congress CM, Siddaramaiah commissioned the report to enumerate the state’s various castes as well as their socio-economic and educational status.

Siddaramaiah, while receiving the report, said it would be placed before the Cabinet at the next meeting. The Cabinet will decide if the survey recommendations will be accepted or not. The report was expected to be released during the elections to five states last November but got delayed amid opposition to its release by the state’s influential Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities.

The survey has been opposed by the state’s two dominant communities, the Lingayats and Vokkaligas, who fear that the survey will reveal their numbers are far less than estimated. Accordingly, both communities have already called the survey unscientific. But the report is eagerly awaited by the state’s Backward Classes, SC-STs and minorities, who are traditionally allied with the Congress, and whose numbers are likely to see a rise.

A version of the report, which got “leaked” in 2018, indicated that the Lingayats and Vokkaligas constituted only 9.8% and 8.2% of Karnataka’s six-crore population, instead of the 17% and 15% that is usually assumed. While the report is only an enumeration of castes and does not contain recommendations, these communities fear that its results will even be used to decide quotas in government, including the Cabinet, where Lingayats and Vokkaligas are currently in a majority.

The Congress government is unlikely to place the report before the