Karnataka launches massive door-to-door caste survey to map SC communities: Report

Karnataka has launched a state-wide door-to-door survey to collect detailed data on Scheduled Caste (SC) communities, including their sub-castes, education levels, and economic status.

The 13-day exercise, which began on Monday, is aimed at helping the state government decide on internal reservation among SC groups, The Hindu reported.

The initiative is led by a commission chaired by retired High Court judge HN Nagamohan Das.

According to the report, nearly 60,000 enumerators will fan out across Karnataka over the next two weeks, each tasked with collecting data from about 130 households. Equipped with a custom-built mobile application, these field-level staff, mostly school teachers and anganwadi workers, will record details such as caste, sub-caste, occupation, education, and employment status.

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The mobile app will function only between 6 am and 6 pm, after which it will automatically lock to maintain data integrity. The information gathered will be uploaded in real time to a centralised and secure server.

To ensure accuracy, around 6,000 Panchayat Development Officers (PDOs) have been designated as supervisors. These officials will randomly inspect households to confirm that visits have been made and data recorded appropriately, the report further added.

The 2015 caste census had estimated Karnataka’s SC population to be around 1.09 crore, approximately 18.2 per cent of the state’s total population. The current survey seeks to update this data and identify how benefits under government schemes are reaching various SC sub-groups.

Tech-enabled data collection and war room support

A central ‘war room’ has been established to monitor the survey’s progress, offering real-time support to enumerators facing technical or logistical challenges. In addition to a dedicated helpline, enumerators have been issued handbooks and trained extensively to use the mobile app and navigate the field process.

To avoid fraudulent entries, the mobile app has been integrated with verification mechanisms using official documents such as caste certificates, ration cards, Aadhaar numbers, or voter IDs. Entering any one of these linked IDs will auto-populate the respondent’s details, officials said.

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