CM Siddaramaiah points to Congress high command, says re-enumerating caste population data not Karnataka govt's decision
Responding to media queries at Gowribidanur in Chikkaballapur district, Siddaramaiah said, 'We will do whatever the high command says. It is not my decision. It is not the decision of the Cabinet. It is not the decision of our government. It is a decision of the high command. They have told us to go for re-enumeration,' he said.
The directions from the high command had come ahead of a special Cabinet meeting convened by the Siddaramaiah administration Thursday, which was said to be keen on accepting the report. The decision was announced by Congress general secretary K C Venugopal after the high command held a meeting with Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.
The report had kept several communities on tenterhooks, especially the Lingayats and Vokkaligas who had publicly criticised it for being 'unscientific'.
'The high command has told us that they have received some complaints because the survey was done in 2015-16. Nine to 10 years have passed, and the data has become old,' Siddaramaiah said. The government will now conduct the survey 'in a short span of time', within 60-70 days, he added.
This does not mean that the entire report will be rejected, the Congress leader stated, referring to the various recommendations made in it. 'Principally, the report is accepted, but enumeration will be done again,' he added.
The survey was commissioned in 2015 during Siddaramaiah's first term as chief minister but was placed before the Cabinet only in April this year. Dominant communities have opposed the report as the survey found that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) formed 70 per cent of the state's population and dismissed assumptions about the size of the Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities. OBC groups, however, have asked the government to accept the report.
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