Veerashaiva-Lingayat leaders in the Congress, attempting to increase their outreach within the community, has urged the State government to set up a Veerashaiva-Lingayat Development Corporation to help socially and economically weaker sections in the community.
Community legislators from the Congress met here on Wednesday night where they deliberated and decided to seek the government’s help to uplift community members. They met Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Thursday and submitted a memorandum in this regard. The memorandum was signed by Ministers M.B. Patil, Shivanand Patil and Rajshekar Patil, KPCC working president Eshwar Khandre, and former Minister Shamanur Shivashankarappa, among others.
The memorandum said that a majority of the community members were dependent on agriculture and small trade, and they had been affected by continuous drought and onslaught of retail chains. It said that only a few sub-sects within the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community have benefited by reservation, and that it should be extended to all community members. Establishment of the corporation would help extend government programmes to the community members, they said.
In another memorandum, the Veerashaiva-Lingayat legislators urged the State government to send a recommendation to the Centre to include the community in Other Backward Classes (OBC) list, to help youth in education and employment opportunities. It pointed out that in Karnataka, the community has been recognised as OBC for the past 70 years.
It said the community has not been included by the Centre in its OBC list since Mandal Commission did not recommend it, and the community is socially and economically backward than many others in Centre’s list. Veerashaiva-Lingayat of Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Maharashtra, Kerala, ,Goa and Tamil Nadu had been recognised as OBCs by the Centre, the memorandum said.
The legislators also pointed out that Karnataka had recognised 205 castes and 822 sub-castes as OBCs while the Centre had notified 199 castes and 753 sub-castes as OBCs from Karnataka, which meant several castes and sub-castes had been denied benefits in education and employment.
