3 days ago
Bengaluru woman booked for verbally abusing BBMP officials during data collection for caste survey
The Bengaluru police have booked a woman for allegedly insulting and obstructing Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials during a door-to-door visit to collect data for a survey of sub castes among Scheduled Castes (SCs).
The alleged incident occurred at an apartment in the HSR Layout police station limits between 1.15 pm and 1.45 pm. The police booked Pavithra K, a resident of a fourth-floor apartment in Sector 6 of the HSR Layout, based on the complaint of Ramya S, BBMP's Bommanahalli Zone Commissioner.
When the BBMP team, including revenue inspectors and tax collectors, visited flat number 402 in one of the apartments, Pavithra allegedly shouted at them.
'The obstruction caused to the survey in one apartment resulted in an obstruction to the survey in the other apartments on the same floor,' said the BBMP official's police complaint.
Following the incident, the BBMP officials were forced to call the owners of the other apartments in the building and direct them to ask their tenants to cooperate in the caste survey. The survey was eventually carried out the next day, on June 24, says the complaint, which sought action against the woman for 'using abusive language and obstructing the caste survey work at the houses in the building'.
The Karnataka government began a survey on May 5 to determine the number of people in the 101 sub-castes within the SCs in Karnataka. The completion of the survey has been delayed by over a month due to alleged problems in gathering data in urban areas, such as Bengaluru, especially at apartment blocks.
The survey of sub-castes among the SCs is an exercise undertaken by the Congress government in the state as a precursor to fulfilling its promise to provide internal reservations for socially weaker sub-castes within the 15 per cent SC quota in the state.
While the survey was initially scheduled to be conducted from May 5 to 17, it has seen multiple extensions due to delays in collecting data. The survey was initiated based on the recommendations of an interim report on internal reservations for SCs, which was submitted to the state government on March 27 by the one-man commission of Justice Nagamohan Das.
The commission recommended a fresh survey of the SCs in Karnataka to develop a scientific classification of SC sub-castes, following respondents' vague SC identifications during the 2011 Census.
Nearly 43 per cent of respondents had previously designated themselves as belonging to the broad categories of Adi Dravida, Adi Karnataka, and Adi Andhra – without specifying which of the 101 SC subcastes, such as Madigas, Holeyas, and others, they belonged to.
