BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is likely to discuss the Scheduled Tribe tag for the Kuruba community during Thursday’s cabinet meeting, as Mysuru-based Karnataka State Tribal Research Institute (KSTRI) has reportedly finished its ethnographic study of the community. The report favours an ST tag for Kurubas, according to sources.
It was during the previous BJP government that then CM Basavaraj Bommai had sent a proposal to the Centre, seeking ST tag for the community at the behest of former minister and Kuruba leader KS Eshwarappa. But the Centre had sent back the proposal, raising certain queries, following which the ethnographic study was necessitated.
At the Valmiki Jayanti event on Tuesday, Siddaramaiah admitted that the BJP government had taken the initiative. He is wary that the Valmiki community (ST Nayaka) has been opposing the move to grant ST tag to Kurubas.
One of Siddaramaiah’s associates and former MP VS Ugrappa, also an ST Nayaka leader, issued a warning at the event that the community will fight the ST tag to Kurubas. “We have no problem if 7 per cent quota is increased to 14 per cent before making any such move,” he cautioned.
It was in 1990-91, when Chandrashekar was PM, that Ugrappa and former PM HD Deve Gowda had managed to get ST status for the Nayaka community in Karnataka.
Now, CM Siddaramaiah appears to be in a Catch-22 situation — whether to go ahead with the ST tag proposal for his Kuruba community by taking on the ST Nayaka community. The issue comes at a juncture when the ST Nayaka community does not have adequate representation in the cabinet to deliberate on the issue. ST Nayaka leaders B Nagendra and KN Rajanna lost their ministerial posts, and the lone community leader now is PWD Minister Satish Jarkiholi. Rajanna’s wife Shanthala, a former Tumakuru ZP president, had opposed the ST tag for Kurubas.
Siddaramaiah, who also holds the ST Development portfolio, ensured that officials held several rounds of talks on the issue, as there is an urgency to send the fresh proposal to the Centre.
The Office of the Registrar General of India, which had gone through the earlier proposals, including the one submitted by the government in July 2023, had made certain observations to which the state’s ST welfare department has to respond at the earliest, according to sources.
