Maintaining that only the Centre has authority to conduct a caste census, the BJP in Karnataka has urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to clarify about the status of the caste census prepared by his government.

Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru on Thursday, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashok termed the State’s caste census report as “unofficial”. He said the Centre’s caste survey would be used by the Election Commission, but the State’s caste census report will end up in the “trash bin.”

He accused Mr. Siddaramaiah of trying to use the report for political gain as he faces the risk of losing power. Stating that the Congress government’s caste census report in Karnataka was released 10 years after it was conducted in 2015, Mr. Ashok said people were wondering about its fate now as the Centre would be conducting an “authentic survey.”

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his decision to include caste enumeration as part of the general census, Mr. Ashok challenged the Congress to give reasons for not conducting a national-level caste census when it was in power at the Centre. It also alleged that a proposal for caste census had been rejected when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister.

Contradicting this claim at a programme in Bengaluru, AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge stated that the UPA government initiated a socio-economic caste census in 2010, when Dr. Singh was the Prime Minister. “But the BJP that came to power later didn’t release that report. Rahul Gandhi repeatedly highlighted it. In 2023, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, urging him to initiate a caste census and add it as a component in the general census format. But the Union government ignored my letter… The BJP and Mr. Modi want to take credit for initiating this caste census, therefore they ignored our previous appeals,” he said.