Karnataka caste survey hit by teachers’ protest against enumeration duty; BJP petitions commission

The demonstration came even as the survey, which started on Monday, was affected by technical glitches, delaying enumeration in a full-fledged manner. In a post on X, JD(S) leader Nikhil Kumaraswamy alleged that the data collection application used for the survey had crashed. “The Karnataka Congress government is spending ₹420 crore of taxpayers’ money on a 15-day socio-economic survey. But by Day 2, the survey app has already crashed,” he wrote on Tuesday.

However, sources in the commission rejected the allegations, saying that though there were some glitches during the first day of the enumeration exercise, they were addressed. “The exercise is being carried out smoothly,” an official of the commission told indianexpress.com.

During the day, a BJP delegation led by Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Chalavadi Narayanaswamy, and MLA and former minister V Sunil Kumar submitted a petition to the commission’s chairman, Madhusudhan R Naik. They alleged that 15 “new Christian SC castes” were included in the list of castes being surveyed by the commission, and urged it to mask their names in the drop-down list used in the survey app. While the commission has masked 33 caste names such as Madiga Christian and Kuruba Christian prior to the start of the exercise, it has not done so for caste names with ‘Christian’ in them compiled under the SC list, the BJP delegation alleged.

The commission, however, stated in a release that none of the “Christian castes” mentioned in the Scheduled Caste list were included in the list prepared by it. None of the castes mentioned are included in the app being used for the survey, it added.