The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday (June 16, 2025) accused the Congress of “always deceiving” the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and treating them only as a “vote bank”, stating that the decision to conduct a fresh caste survey in Karnataka was driven by the motive of “electoral engineering”.
At a press conference, Union Minister and BJP leader Bhupender Yadav sought to fix responsibility for the expenditure of about ₹165 crore on the first caste survey, which was initiated in 2015 and its report submitted in 2024. He alleged that there were several issues with that report, which was not made public, and communal appeasement had also been done.
Mr. Yadav disputed the process being adopted for the resurvey, saying that the 90-day timeline was “unrealistic”. Citing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s remarks that the decision was not his government’s but that of the Congress leadership, he questioned the party’s “interference” in the State government’s functioning and said it was akin to the National Advisory Council’s role during the UPA regime.
Alleging that the Congress always deceived the OBCs, the Union Minister said after the Kaka Kalelkar Commission’s report, which was “suppressed”, the subsequent Congress governments did not constitute any other commission. The Mandal Commission was formed under the Janata Party rule. After the Supreme Court upheld the legality of Mandal Commission, the Congress did the work of weakening it, he alleged.
