BENGALURU: The Congress high command’s instruction to conduct a fresh caste survey is said to be aimed at nullifying the damage caused to the ruling government's reputation after the stampede outside M Chinnaswamy Stadium that killed 11 people.
The fate of the previous Socio-Economic and Educational Survey (SES-2015), approved by the cabinet, will be decided at Thursday’s cabinet meeting. If not for the high command’s intervention, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had planned to go ahead with its implementation at the special cabinet meeting at Nandi Hills on June 19.
The high command is alarmed as Siddaramaiah, towards the end of his first term as chief minister in 2018, had promised a separate religious status to the Lingayat community, but the issue backfired and the party got a severe drubbing at the hustings.
The top leadership did not want a repeat of it with the implementation of the caste survey, which it termed obsolete. AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, defending the decision for a resurvey, said SES-2015 is ten years old.
The resurvey will also soothe the frayed nerves of two dominant communities - Veerashaiva Lingayat and Vokkaliga — that have termed the SES-2015 unscientific and have demanded a resurvey.
As soon as the cabinet tabled the SES-2015 report for discussion, Shivakumar clandestinely led a delegation of Veerashaiva Lingayat ministers to Kharge, sources said.
Senior legislator and Veerashaiva Mahasabha president Shamanuru Shivashankarappa is also said to have played a vital role in convincing the high command to instruct the government to conduct the resurvey, sources said.
“It’s not only these two castes, other backward classes too have raised their objections to SES, which is said to have shown their population as less. Also, recommendations of reclassification of backward classes quota by K Jayaprakash Hegde had flaws,” an expert said.
But Siddaramaiah had maintained that the SES report was tabled in the cabinet for discussion because LoP in LS Rahul Gandhi insisted on it. On Wednesday, he sent out a message to the backward classes that the resurvey is the high command’s decision.
But experts pointed to umpteen challenges in conducting the survey, including resources to reach over the state’s seven crore population. With the Centre already declaring that it will conduct the national census and will include caste too in it, the numbers between the two enumerations could conflict, they added.
“There have been some complaints about the caste census. It has been 10 years since it was conducted. We will not reject the report, which has been accepted in principle,” Siddaramaiah told reporters in Gouribidanur on Wednesday. Asked whether the high command’s decision on the Kantharaju Commission report has disappointed him, he said, “We act as decided by the party high command. This is not our decision.”
Backward Classes Welfare Minister Shivaraj Tangadagi said SES will be discussed threadbare at the cabinet meeting on Thursday and decision wil be taken. “We should follow what high command leaders and chief ministers have said. Kantharaju’s report will also be discussed. All the three chief ministers have given their suggestions at the three cabinet meetings,” he said.
