22 Karnataka ministers’ views hanging fire, Siddaramaiah defers action on caste survey

“We had a discussion again on the report of the caste survey and many ministers offered their advice to the Chief Minister (Siddaramaiah). More opinions are expected and some information was presented by the Minister for Welfare of Backward Classes. There will be further discussions in the next Cabinet meeting,” Law Minister H K Patil said after the Cabinet meeting on Friday.

“Some ministers have given their opinions about the report and more (ministers’ opinions) are awaited,” Patil said. The next Cabinet meeting on the issue is likely to take place in the upcoming week.

On February 29, 2024, the KSBCC submitted a report to the Siddaramaiah government on the state-wide social and educational survey of castes conducted in 2015.

The sealed envelope of the report was opened only on April 11 in a Cabinet meeting.

The matter was placed before the Cabinet for further action on the report and its data.

In the April 18 special Cabinet meeting, Siddaramaiah directed all his 34 ministers to provide their opinions on the report in writing for a thorough discussion.

However, only about 12 ministers have given their opinions over the caste survey report so far. There is a strong push from the Congress’s OBC leaders for the government to accept the report which indicates that 70% of the state population belongs to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

There has been resistance from the state’s dominant communities like Lingayats and Vokkaligas to the caste survey report, which has indicated their populations to be 13.6% and 12.2% — lesser than their estimated populations of 15% and 17% respectively. They have opposed the report on the ground that it was “unscientific” and has not counted their numbers correctly. However, the April 30 announcement by the BJP-led central government of its proposal to include caste enumeration in the forthcoming population Census is expected to bring down their resistance.

These dominant communities also feature under the OBC category in Karnataka along with Muslims, and the KSBCC report has recommended an increase in their quotas as well.

The Congress leadership has indicated that it would pursue the strategy of pushing the BJP at the Centre to increase the reservations in government jobs and education above the existing 50% ceiling to enable higher quotas for various communities as per their respective shares in the population.

The Siddaramaiah government may enact a law to increase reservation in the state above the 50% limit based on the KSBCC report’s recommendations.

Based on the socio-economic and educational caste survey of 2015, the KSBCC has recommended an increase in reservation for the OBC groups from the existing 32% to 51% in proportion to their population, thereby taking the overall quota for the backward communities to 69% — including 18% for Scheduled Castes (SCs)/ Scheduled Tribes (STs) — and the total reservation to 79% which includes 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).

The All India Congress Committee (AICC)’s president Mallikarjun Kharge recently said that “The Union government must remove the present reservation cap of 50% and include the SCs/STs/OBCs and EWS in the revised reservations.”