The Socio-Economic and Educational Survey, carried out by the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes, hit a roadblock on Tuesday as a section of teachers protested at Belagavi, urging to be relieved from enumeration duty.
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During the protest, the teachers maintained that though they were not against the survey, they objected to the inclusion of teachers with physical disabilities, health problems, and seniors unfit to carry out the door-to-door survey. In a petition submitted to the deputy commissioner of the district, they said that though the district administration had earlier agreed to drop them from the exercise, many teachers facing such problems were included in the list released by the block education officer.
The demonstration came even as the survey, which started on Monday, was affected by technical glitches, delaying enumeration in a full-fledged manner. In a post on X, JD(S) leader Nikhil Kumaraswamy alleged that the data collection application used for the survey had crashed. “The Karnataka Congress government is spending ₹420 crore of taxpayers’ money on a 15-day socio-economic survey. But by Day 2, the survey app has already crashed,” he wrote on Tuesday.
However, sources in the commission rejected the allegations, saying that though there were some glitches during the first day of the enumeration exercise, they were addressed. “The exercise is being carried out smoothly,” an official of the commission told indianexpress.com.
During the day, a BJP delegation led by Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Chalavadi Narayanaswamy, and MLA and former minister V Sunil Kumar submitted a petition to the commission’s chairman, Madhusudhan R Naik. They alleged that 15 “new Christian SC castes” were included in the list of castes being surveyed by the commission, and urged it to mask their names in the drop-down list used in the survey app. While the commission has masked 33 caste names such as Madiga Christian and Kuruba Christian prior to the start of the exercise, it has not done so for caste names with ‘Christian’ in them compiled under the SC list, the BJP delegation alleged.
The commission, however, stated in a release that none of the “Christian castes” mentioned in the Scheduled Caste list were included in the list prepared by it. None of the castes mentioned are included in the app being used for the survey, it added.