Representative image of survey
Credit: iStock Images
Bengaluru: A comprehensive survey of all SC (Scheduled Caste) communities in the state will begin on Monday as per the recommendations of Justice H N Nagamohan Das Commission.
The door-to-door survey of SC households will be held till May 17 and will be used as the basis to provide internal reservation to SCs.
The Justice Das Commission was formed after the state Cabinet decided to take steps to provide internal reservation to SCs following the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict in August 2024 that enabled the states to provide internal reservation to SCs.
Earlier, SC/ST communities had 18% reservation (15% for SC and 3% for ST) in Karnataka. This was hiked to 24% (17% for SC and 7% for ST) during the previous BJP government’s regime, but is yet to be ratified as it breaches the 50% ceiling imposed on reservation by the Supreme Court.
The current move will help to redistribute the 18% reservations within this cap to different SC sub-communities based on their population and backwardness. The survey will collect data on the numbers of each SC sub-caste and their socio-educational backwardness and their backwardness in government jobs.
According to the Social and Educational Survey report based on the survey in 2015, there are 1.09 crore SCs in the state. The current survey will ascertain their present numbers and also seek to clarify the existing doubts about the specifics of these sub-castes.
Internal reservation has been a decades-long demand of the SC (Left) community, which has accused the SC (Right) community of appropriating most reservation benefits over the years.