BENGALURU: Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha leaders are carefully going through the caste census survey handbook that was released on Thursday after the cabinet meeting gave its nod. They are counting all the Veerashaiva Lingayat sub-castes, as the last caste census pegged their population at just 66 lakh. Community leaders had insisted that the real number was closer to 1.25 crore, and blamed the gap on the exclusion of several sub-castes..
Mahasabha sources said the state government had printed copies of the census handbook earlier, but had to discard it because of many errors. Now that the fresh handbook has been released, they said they would officially respond on Friday.
With the Social and Educational Survey 2025 set to begin on September 22 under the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission, the Akhil Bharata Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha is becoming active. Leaders are crisscrossing districts, holding awareness drives and urging members to record their identity as ‘Veerashaiva Lingayat’ under the religion column, ‘Lingayat’ or ‘Veerashaiva’ under the caste column, and the exact sub-caste code.
“This time, over 100 sub-castes are being recognized, unlike just 79 earlier,” said Mahasabha secretary Renuka Prasanna, stressing on accurate enumeration for the community’s social, political and economic clout. He said community leaders had demanded a drop-down system listing all Veerashaiva sub-castes under one head, but this was instead done alphabetically. The first Lingayat sub-caste name appears at number 4 and the last at number 1500.
Mahasabha senior vice-president and minister Eshwar Khandre has warned that a faulty count could weaken the community’s bargaining power for representation and resources. The Mahasabha has also warned against deliberate misinformation campaigns, accusing vested interests of circulating doctored social media videos to confuse the community.
The Mahasabha will stage many programmes to mobilize the community across Karnataka. “We will reach out to all Veerashaiva Lingayats and instruct everyone to respond uniformly,” Prasanna said.