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A controversy has erupted over the door-to-door survey of Scheduled Caste households regarding internal reservation in Karnataka, with complaints that survey personnel merely pasted stickers on houses without collecting any details. The stickers state that the survey has been completed, leaving residents fuming.
In some instances, people seem to have confused the SC caste survey with the Karnataka socio-economic and education survey, for which the state government has recently decided to conduct a re-enumeration. However, the state government has not yet decided on the timeline for the socio-economic survey.
Some residents have also been confused, as the enumerators have merely said it was a caste survey and not specified it being a SC caste survey.
Social media is flooded with social media posts ridiculing the state government's survey process. Multiple incidents have been reported of people confronting survey staff for failing to collect individual details.
In one such case, an incident of surveyors allegedly assaulted a resident in Bengaluru in front of his family on Thursday, July 3.
Following the surfacing of CCTV footage of the assault, the Karnataka government suspended three officers and ordered a probe. The footage also revealed that a Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) worker, deputed for street sweeping duties, was used to paste the survey stickers.
Several residents have claimed that stickers were pasted on vacant houses and that they never interacted with any survey personnel. People are questioning how the state government can claim the survey is complete without collecting any actual data.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka BJP has slammed the Congress-led government in the state over the alleged flawed internal survey.
Taking to social media, the BJP criticised the Congress-led state government, saying, "Karnataka's caste census of the SC community is yet another guaranteed loot of Kannadigas' tax money. The "Lottery CM" appears to have instructed his team to slap "survey done" stickers on doors without visiting homes, even marking vacant houses."
"What credibility does a survey have if it is done in locked homes? Who did the surveyors talk to?" BJP asked.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, while announcing a door-to-door survey to provide internal reservations for 101 sub-castes that come under the Scheduled Caste list, said that specific data is required.
Justice Nagamohan Das Commission has made all preparations to collect empirical data, and about 65,000 teachers are being used for conducting the survey.
Karnataka BJP has announced that it will launch a statewide protest from August 1, demanding the implementation of internal reservation in the state.
(With IANS inputs)