Data On Caste Of Kerala Government Employees Questioned By Some, Welcomed By IUML MLA

The data provided by a report regarding the community-wise breakup of government employees that was prepared by the Kerala State Commission for Backward Classes has been questioned by some, including G Sukumaran Nair, the general secretary of the Nair Service Society (NSS).

According to the report, the Nair and the Ezhava communities had the highest representation. Some of the numbers given were as follows-

1,15,075 Ezhava, 1,08,012 Nair, 73,774 Muslims, 73,713 Christians belonging to forward communities, 22,542 Latin Catholics and 19,627 Pulaya.

Sukumaran Nair, dismissed the data and said that it was unreliable as there was no proper system to generate it as per a report by The Hindu.

The report also quoted G Mohan Gopal, a constitutional expert, who said that this had created a false equivalence about the representation of the Nair and Ezhava communities. According to him, the Ezhava community was mostly engaged in lower level positions, while the Nairs have a better representation in higher levels of the government.

He suggested that the data on the nature of employment like permanent or contractual, post, type of institution, whether the selection was in general merit or through reservation etc should also be put out in order to get a more holistic picture.

However, P Ubaiduallah, an MLA of the Indian Union Muslim League welcomed the data. He said that this showed the reality that the representation of Muslims was low when compared to their share in the state's population.

According to officials of the Commission, the employees caste details were uploaded on the e-Caste Database based on the entry in their service books and for the purpose of the report, the nodal officers of various departments had sumbmitted the data.