The Kannada jobs campaign led by the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike continued for a second day on Tuesday, with more than 10 teams submitting petitions to representatives of over 120 companies across Bengaluru and seeking information on employment opportunities available to Kannadigas.
The campaign covered major employment clusters including Electronic City, Whitefield, Mahadevapura, Manyata Tech Park and Bannerghatta Road. The teams met representatives of companies including Infosys, IBM, Cognizant and Reliance, according to the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike.
The organisation’s state president, T.A. Narayanagowda, said the campaign would continue until November 30. He said teams would meet representatives of private companies across different sectors in Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka to collect information on the representation of Kannadigas in the state’s industrial and corporate workforce.
The information gathered during the campaign will be compiled into a report and submitted to the Karnataka government, Narayanagowda said. The exercise places private-sector hiring practices at the centre of a wider debate over local employment, the role of the state government and the relationship between Karnataka’s technology economy and its resident workforce.
A delegation led by Bengaluru city unit president T.A. Dharmaraj Gowda visited the headquarters of Reliance Retail on Bannerghatta Road and submitted a petition. Representatives of the company told the delegation that Reliance has a workforce of 74,000 employees, of whom more than 75% are Kannadigas, the organisation said.
The campaign is also pressing the government to implement a proposed bill on employment reservations for Kannadigas. Gowda said the bill, which had earlier been approved by the cabinet under the Siddaramaiah-led government, should be implemented by the current government led by Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar. He warned that the organisation would launch a more intensive agitation if the bill was not implemented.
Narayanagowda also criticised entrepreneur Mohandas Pai over his opposition to the employment reservation proposal. He alleged that Pai had obstructed the bill and was attempting to influence information technology companies against providing employment opportunities to Kannadigas. These remarks were made by the organisation’s leader during the campaign and were not accompanied in the report by a response from Pai.
The Vedike said the campaign was not intended to trouble or threaten companies. Gowda said the teams were submitting petitions peacefully and had behaved courteously during their visits, while company representatives had also responded respectfully. He rejected suggestions that the campaign amounted to moral policing.
The campaign’s next stated milestone is November 30, when the organisation plans to conclude its visits and compile the employment-representation information for submission to the Karnataka government.
