New Delhi: In a move that may impact the BJP’s Lingayat voteshare in the coming Karnataka Assembly elections, which the Congress has been attempting to fracture, the Centre is expected to adhere to the previous Congress-led UPA government’s view in 2013 that there is no difference between the Lingayat and the Veerashaiva-Lingayat communities. Toeing a safe line, the Centre will not be taking any final decision at this juncture as the model code of conduct is in force in Karnataka.
This move comes after the Siddaramaiah government in Karnataka sent a recommendation to the Centre to accord Lingayats a separate religion tag, to make them eligible for minority status. By toeing the precedent set by the Congress-led UPA government in 2013 and putting the blame on them, the BJP in Karnataka, which relies heavily on the Lingayat community to boost its poll prospects, can ensure that the Congress does not draw any political advantage even if the Centre does not act on the Siddaramaiah government’s recommendation.
The BJP is also expected to contend that the latest recommendation by Mr Siddaramaiah is intended to split the Lingayat-Veerashiava community and secure separate religion status only for the Lingayat community, excluding the Veerashaiva Lingayats.
The Manmohan Singh government had in 2013 rejected the demand for granting separate religion status to the Veerashaiva-Lingayats. The office of the Registrar-General of India (RGI), in its communication to the then home minister (Sushil Kumar Shinde) on November 14, 2013, had said: “The demand made by All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha for treating Veerashaiva-Lingayat as an independent religion is apparently not logical and correct.”
The Union home ministry on Thursday forwarded the Karnataka government’s politically sensitive proposal to grant religious minority status to the sizeable Lingayat-Veerashaiva/Lingayat communities to the minority affairs ministry. Home ministry officials said the issue was examined by the office of the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner after the state government sent the proposal a few days ago, but realised that this particular issue was handled by the minority affairs ministry.
“The office of RGI looks into various religions and people belonging to them in the country for the purpose of census and other data. But the final decision on the granting of religious minority status has to be taken by the minority affairs ministry, so the proposal has been forwarded to them,” a senior official said.
The issue of granting Lingayats a separate religion tag is politically sensitive since the Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats are an important votebank for the BJP in Karnataka, which goes to the polls next month.
The Karnataka Cabinet, which cleared this proposal and sent it to the Centre for formal clearance, is trying to not only split the BJP’ Lingayat votebank by recommending a separate religion tag only to a segment of the Lingayat community, while leaving out the Veerashaiavas, it is also attempting to pass the buck by saying while they backed the move, the Centre had squashed it, thereby depriving Lingayat mathas, or religious institutions, the minority tag that they had been pushing for.
Sources claimed the minority affairs ministry is likely to send the proposal to the office of the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner for a detailed examination and suggestions as both the Lingayat and Veerashaiva-Lingayat communities are numerically strong in the state, so it will consider whether such groups can be given the status of a “religious minority”.
The proposal was cleared by the Karnataka Cabinet after an expert committee constituted by it made a similar recommendation. The Karnataka State Minorities Commission had constituted a seven-member panel, headed by retired high court judge H.N. Nagamohan Das, to examine the issue and the committee submitted its report on March 2.
So far the BJP and other groups have remained silent on the contentious issue and even accused the Congress-led Siddaramaiah government of dividing society for gaining political advantage in the coming Assembly elections.
The issue of getting the status of religious minority has been a long-standing demand of the Lingayat and Veerashaiva Lingayat communities, who feel successive governments have failed to resolve the issue. These communities are followers of the 12th century social reformer Basaveshwara, but claim that the two cannot be projected as one and the same community.
