With the social and education survey set to end on Friday, only 43.5% of the target households were fully surveyed in the Greater Bangalore Authority (GBA) area as on Thursday evening.
However, the official data reveals an interesting anomaly. GBA limits had 44,19,432 target households, of which 19,24,770 (43.5%) were fully surveyed and 29,40,205 (66.5%) were marked as closed. This created an odd situation where the GBA recorded a completion rate of 105%.
This is a result of the administrative inclusion of closed and non-measurable households, and the fact that the total includes not only households that completed the questionnaire, but also those that were locked out, refused to participate, moved, or were identified as commercial or vacant.
Duplicate or overlapping Unique Household Identification (UHID) numbers being counted, along with foreclosed households, inflated the total and pushed the reported progress above 100%, officials said.
The GBA area is consistently among the slowest in the state. Officials attributed the delay to opposition from several social welfare associations (RWAs) and the reluctance of urban dwellers to share socio-economic details. The survey, conducted by the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes, will end on Friday, with an online extension for voluntary participation till November 10.
West highest survey
Among the five corporations, West Corporation reported the highest number of completed surveys at 5,23,972 out of 12,33,034 households, followed by North Corporation which completed 4,29,433 out of 8,87,520.
In Central Corporation, the number of target households is 5,10,324, of which only 2,12,752 have actually been completed. That should translate to a completion rate of around 41.7%, but Thursday’s progress report puts it at 100.41%. “The intention was to ensure that every address within the jurisdiction was accounted for, even though complete data could not be collected. But this inclusion makes the completion percentage look unusually high. It is a technical, not a physical reflection of progress,” the official said.
UHID system
Much of the confusion stems from the UHID system. Each household is assigned a unique code, but several overlapping or outdated UHIDs from earlier exercises skewed the dataset. “Several undetectable cases are linked to UHID conflicts. A household may already have a UHID from an earlier survey or a commercial property may have multiple UHIDs connected to separate electrical or borehole connections that block new entries at the same location,” said a senior official.
Officials also mentioned that the survey period, which began on October 23 when the exercise resumed after the Deepavali vacation and many teachers had already been relieved, saw a flurry of uploading of data and verification records. In several cases, multiple UHIDs were generated for the same address, sometimes through technical triggers, further increasing the total completion numbers.
Published – 30 Oct 2025 22:29 IST
