Bihar caste survey: Cong Karnataka govt prepares to release its own report in Nov

Jayaprakash Hegde, chairman of the KSCBC, told The Indian Express that the survey carried out in Karnataka was “not just a caste census but had also compiled several data points at the family level”. He said the scope and findings of the Karnataka survey were much larger than the exercise carried out in Bihar.

“The Socio-Economic and Education Survey has minute details of every family such as education, occupation, income, social strata etc,” Hedge said, adding, “We are in the final stages of compiling the report. We will submit it before the end of November.”

Conducted at a cost of around Rs 165 crore, the survey was completed in 2017 but was kept under wraps due to opposition from the Lingayat community and a section of Dalit leaders in the Congress. The resistance stemmed from leaked findings of the report that hinted that Lingayats were not the largest community in the state and that the numerically smaller ‘Dalit right’ were better off and enjoyed more benefits than the larger ‘Dalit left’. The Dalit right consists of communities such as the Holeyas, while the Dalit left predominantly comprises the Madigas.

The leaks also suggested the Scheduled Caste and Muslim populations were bigger than those of the dominant Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities.

The government and the KSCBC had, however, denied the findings in the leaked data. Though speculation was rife that the report would be released in the final months of the Congress government’s tenure, it was delayed as the party feared a backlash in the 2018 Assembly polls. Prospects of the report seeing the light of the day diminished further following the agitation for a separate Lingayat religion category ahead of the 2018 polls. The Congress went on to lose the elections to the BJP.

Since then, Congress leaders have accused subsequent governments led by JD(S) CM H D Kumaraswamy and BJP CMs B S Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai of sitting on the report. In the run-up to the Assembly polls held in May this year, Siddaramaiah and other Congress leaders had said they would publish the findings of the survey if elected.

Among the Congress leaders urging the government to release the report is Congress Working Committee member and OBC leader B K Hariprasad, who has been in a tussle with the Siddaramaiah government lately. Welcoming the “historic” decision of the Bihar government, he said that like Bihar, the Karnataka government should “show the courage of releasing the report”.

In an interview with The Indian Express, the Congress’s former Union minister and Karnataka CM M Veerappa Moily said the state’s report is “under implementation”. He added that the secretary of the KSCBC had not signed the report in 2017, which the previous BJP government used as an “excuse” not to release the survey.

“I am asking Siddaramaiah to release the report immediately. Now that the Congress government has come to power and Siddaramaiah has become CM, he has to release the report,” Moily told PTI on Tuesday.

Karnataka Minister of Food and Civil Supplies K H Muniyappa also requested the government to take a decision on accepting the report soon.