Ongoing SC survey finds people from nomadic communities without even one govt. document

The Hindu

17-05-2025

The survey of Scheduled Castes, currently under way in Karnataka to determine internal reservation, has also brought out the fact that a section of economically deprived population among the nomadic and semi-nomadic communities are subsisting without Aadhaar, below poverty line (BPL) cards, or EPIC issued by Election Commission, which are crucial for obtaining economic and educational benefits for their uplift.
There are 51 nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes among the Scheduled Castes, while there are 23 and 47 nomadic communities among the Scheduled Tribes and backward classes, respectively, in Karnataka.
'We are coming across cases where families do not have any sort of documentation. Since they are nomadic in nature, they keep moving from place to place. In many cases, parents have died young leaving their children without any documents,' said R.V. Chandrashekar of the Bengaluru-based National Law School of India University (NLSIU), who has been deputed to the commission headed by retired Judge H.N. Nagmohan Das.
The commission is monitoring the survey that will help in determining the reservation quota for Dalit (left), Dalit (right) and others, including nomadic/ semi-nomadic communities within the larger 17 % reservation for Scheduled Castes in the State.
'Since they are migratory in nature, these families lack address proof, which is crucial in getting any of the identity documents. The same problem could be there among the nomadic and semi-nomadic communities coming under STs and BCs,' he said.
High in some districts
The enumerators have particularly found such families in Tumakuru, Raichur, Kalaburagi and Mysuru districts. In one case, a boy belonging to Sudugadu Sidda community could not get Aadhaar enrolment because his school transfer certificate (TC), which he had carefully preserved, was not accepted as address proof, since he had crossed 18.
'In a nomadic settlement in Chikkanayakanhalli, of the 18 families, we found that two families did not have any kind of documents,' Mr. Chandrashekar said.
The commission has now decided to create a separate basket for such persons. The commission has decided to separately enumerate them when they are in the booth-level camp mode that is being held from May 26 to May 28.
'As far as possible, awareness has been created among such people to attend the camp for enumeration. Since those without documents cannot be brought into the door-to-door enumeration list, Mr. Nagamohan Das has directed for a separate basket to be created to account for them,' said a source in the commission.
Director at the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS), R. Yathish, who oversees Aadhaar registration in Karnataka, said that those who did not have the document can enroll themselves even now and provide the 14-digit number during the survey.
'We will ascertain if the applicant is from Karnataka or not since those residing here are eligible to participate in the survey,' he said.
The EDCS has developed a crucial app for the survey that has caught the attention of the Centre, which is set to conduct the general census in 2026.
Numbers are small
'Even if one of the family members, especially the family head, has any one document, it is good enough to participate in the survey. Though we have come across families without documents, their numbers are not big,' he said.
The ongoing survey is identifying people belonging to about 186 Scheduled Castes communities and their sub-castes for documenting their socio, economic and educational status. So far, over 20 lakh families have been enumerated out of the projected 25.72 lakh Scheduled Castes households in the State.