Siddaramaiah rubbishes HDK’s caste census comments

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday for the second day in a row continued to ask why people were opposing the caste census before its contents were disclosed, this time directing the question at JD(S) state president HD Kumaraswamy.

A day prior, Siddaramaiah had revealed that he had posed the same question to a Rajya Vokkaligara Sangha delegation, which had submitted a memorandum demanding that the CM reject the Kantharaju Commission report, otherwise known as Karnataka's Socio-Economic and Education Survey.

Kumaraswamy had on multiple occasions claimed that the caste census was in fact “caste arithmetic” and would help Congress gain political traction and “divide society” as a result.

Siddaramaiah however, rubbished the claim. “Does he (Kumaraswamy) know what is in the report? Since he doesn’t know what is in the report, he shouldn’t talk about it. Why would it cause divisions in society?” the CM said.

“Nitish Kumar has accepted the caste census in Bihar. Has it divided society there? Any statement one makes must be rooted in facts,” he added.

He made the comments during an official visit to Bagalkote on Thursday. However, he refused to comment on Karnataka State Permanent Backward Classes Commission (KSPBCC) Chairman K Jayaprakash Hegde's October 2021 letter to the State government about the survey's original “work-sheet” copy missing, a stick that the opposition BJP has been beating the Siddaramaiah government with.

“I’ll call him and talk to him (Hegde),” Siddaramaiah said. He gde himself has pushed back against “misinterpretation” of his letter, insisting that the data had been “100 per cent intact” and safely uploaded.