New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to restrain the Bihar Government from acting upon the recently published data of caste survey even as it issued notice to the Nitish Kumar-led government on petitions challenging the validity of the entire exercise.
A Bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, which had earlier refused to stay the Bihar caste survey, turned down repeated requests by the petitioners’ counsel to stay any further action on the caste survey data.
The Bench, however, said, “If there is an issue with regard to data, that will be considered. We are going to examine the other issue regarding the power of the state government to conduct the exercise.”
The top court asked the Bihar Government to file its response to the petitions in four weeks and gave an additional four weeks to the petitioners to file their counter-affidavit and posted the matter for further hearing on January 2024.
The petitioners’ counsel contended that since the entire data gathering exercise was illegal, the state government should be restrained from acting upon it.
‘Ek Soch Ek Paryas’, an NGO, and Nalanda resident Akhilesh Kumar have challenged the August 1 verdict of the Patna High Court upholding the June 6, 2022 notification issued by the Bihar Government for the caste survey.
The petitioners contended that it was actually a census which in terms of the constitutional mandate, only the Union Government was empowered to conduct. The nature of information sought in the survey violated the right to privacy of the respondents, they contended.