Congress sees caste census fire at home as Siddaramaiah demands 75% quota in Karnataka

Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah has demanded 75% reservation for socially disadvantaged communities and urged the DK Shivakumar-led government to implement the findings of the state's caste survey. His push comes even as the Congress seeks to corner the BJP-led Centre over the caste enumeration in Census 2027.

The Congress is trying its best to use the issue of caste enumeration in Census 2027 to corner the BJP-led Centre. However, it might face a Catch 22 situation with its senior leader and former chief minister Siddaramaiah piling pressure on the Congress government in Karnataka to implement the findings of the caste survey in the state. Talking about caste survey is one thing, but confronting the political consequences of the caste arithmetic is entirely different. It could create dissonance, threatening the state government itself.

At the national level, the Congress has made caste enumeration one of its biggest political weapons against the BJP, arguing that India needs to know the numerical strength of its communities before questions of representation, reservation and distribution of resources can be settled. The party is taking that argument into the 2027 Census, which will enumerate castes beyond Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes nationally for the first time since Independence.

But in Karnataka, where the Congress has been in power since 2023, the party is facing an awkward question — why did it not provide the details of a caste survey that it already has in the state?

Former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has now turned that question into a political challenge to his own party's government. The 79-year-old leader is demanding that the Karnataka caste survey be implemented and has called for reservations to be raised to 75% for Dalits, backward communities and minorities.

Siddaramaiah had reluctantly handed over the CM's chair to DK Shivakumar in May.

The intervention of Siddaramaiah, who is hailed as the face of AHINDA, a social coalition of backward classes, minorities, and Dalits, puts the Congress in an awkward position. Siddaramaiah is a Kuruba, which is part of his AHINDA social coalition.

Shivakumar is a Vokkaliga, which is among the dominant castes.

The Congress can demand caste numbers from the BJP at the national level, but acting on those numbers in Karnataka could disturb the very social and political equations that keep its state government together.

The issue, therefore, is no longer simply about a caste census. It is about whether the Congress is prepared to confront the political consequences of the caste arithmetic it has spent years trying to corner BJP at the national level.

NATIONAL CASTE PUSH OF CONGRESS MEETS A PROBLEM IN KARNATAKA

The timing of Siddaramaiah's push could hardly have been more politically significant. The Congress has accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government of failing to adequately capture OBC representation in the Census 2027 exercise and has described the alleged omission of the OBC category from the Census questionnaire as a "deep conspiracy" to prevent the actual population of OBCs from entering official records.

Its broader argument is that without reliable caste numbers, claims of social justice and proportional representation remain built on estimates rather than evidence.

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and the Congress have increasingly placed this argument at the centre of their politics, linking caste enumeration with representation in institutions, access to resources and the distribution of political power.

But Karnataka holds an inconvenient mirror to the Congress high command. The state does not have to wait for Census 2027 to begin implementation in Karnataka. It has already conducted a caste survey, and a fresh report has been ready since November 2025.

Yet the report remains politically difficult to operationalise. That is where Siddaramaiah's intervention becomes important.

If caste data is necessary for social justice, as the Congress argues nationally, then Karnataka provides the party with an opportunity to demonstrate what that principle means in practice.

But if the numbers lead to demands for a redistribution of reservation and representation, the political consequences could be far more complicated. And Siddaramaiah's fresh demand of 75% reservation is now confronting this very point.

SIDDARAMAIAH'S 75% RESERVATION FORMULA FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Speaking at the Karnataka State Backward Castes Federation's Silver Jubilee celebration on Sunday (September 6) in Bengaluru, Siddaramaiah called for implementation of the caste survey and demanded that reservations for Dalits, backward communities and minorities be increased to 75%.

"If all of you are to get social justice, there must be at least 75% reservation," he said, arguing that reservations should correspond to the population of different communities.

His argument goes beyond government employment and educational institutions. Siddaramaiah has also argued that representation in the Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies should reflect caste and population if political equality is to be achieved.

The former Karnataka CM's proposition is one that the Congress itself has increasingly embraced nationally. The Congress has been demanding that representation should not be determined in the absence of data about who actually makes up India's population. But the moment that principle moves from political rhetoric to government policy, the complications begin for the Grand Old Party.

THE CASTE CENSUS DILEMMA FOR CONGRESS IN KARNATAKA

Karnataka's caste survey has already had a long and politically complicated journey. The first survey was ordered during Siddaramaiah's earlier tenure as chief minister. Conducted in 2015 under the leadership of H Kantharaj, it was completed by 2017 but never became politically actionable.

The report was never tabled due to objections from influential communities of the state — Lingayats and Vokkaligas.

Successive governments, including JD(S)-Congress and BJP administrations, largely avoided turning it into a major policy instrument. That reluctance by these parties was clear. Caste data does not merely describe society. Once published, it can become the basis for demands over reservation, representation, welfare benefits and political power.

When Siddaramaiah returned as CM in 2023, the caste census issue returned to the spotlight. His government moved towards accepting the Backward Classes Commission's report in 2025. But rather than settling the row, it reopened the larger question over the reliability and age of the data.

Siddaramaiah subsequently ordered a fresh caste survey. The new exercise was also projected as a way of generating a more current database and building wider political consensus.

The new report has been ready since November 2025 that the Congress government has not turned the survey into the political breakthrough that its national caste-justice campaign might suggest. And that gap is precisely what Siddaramaiah is now exploiting.

HOW SIDDARAMAIAH IS MAKING DK SHIVAKUMAR GOVT UNCOMFORTABLE

Siddaramaiah might no longer occupy the CM's chair, he has also announced his retirement from electoral politics. But his intervention demonstrates that leaving office does not necessarily mean leaving the political agenda behind.

By returning to caste enumeration and proportional reservation, he has effectively put the Congress government led by incumbent CM DK Shivakumar under pressure to act on an issue closely associated with his own political identity.

For DKS, this is an uncomfortable inheritance. The Congress cannot easily dismiss the demand. Doing so could make the party vulnerable to the charge that its commitment to caste justice is stronger when it is directed at the BJP than when it requires difficult decisions in a state it governs.

But implementing the survey is not politically cost-free either. Karnataka's social structure includes several politically powerful communities with competing claims over reservation, representation and state resources. Any data-driven redistribution could therefore create winners and losers.

Siddaramaiah has trapped the Congress and DKS government in Karnataka. The demand for a 75% reservation adds another layer of difficulty.

Siddaramaiah's 75% formula has an obvious political appeal but a complicated legal path. It is politically significant because a caste survey without a policy response risks being reduced to a statistical exercise, while a policy response based on caste data could fundamentally alter the state's political equilibrium.

For the Congress, the Karnataka caste survey is more than Siddaramaiah's legacy. It is a test of the party's national rhetoric on caste.

The BJP might be the intended target of the caste-census politics of Congress. But Siddaramaiah has ensured that the first serious political battle over what caste data actually means could take place inside Congress-ruled Karnataka. The party wanted caste arithmetic to become a national question. Now, its own AHINDA leader is asking it to do the arithmetic at home.

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