Supreme Court declines to overturn Patna HC's order suspending caste survey
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court has refused to overturn the Patna High Court's interim order suspending the Bihar government's caste survey.
A bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Rajesh Bindal said it would have to examine if the exercise being carried out is a census in the garb of the survey. Justice Bindal also orally remarked that many documents suggest that it is a census.
"We are making it clear, this is not a case where we can grant you interim relief. We direct that this petition be listed on July 14. If for any reason, the hearing of the writ petition does not commence before the next date, we will hear further submission canvassed by the senior counsel for the petitioner (Bihar)," said the top court.
The High Court has posted the next hearing of the main petition on July 3.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for the Bihar government, argued that the high court is completely in error and insisted that the current exercise is not a census but only a voluntary survey. "For the census you have responded. If you don't you are met with a penalty. Not so for the survey. Quantifiable data is required for state policies. Supreme Court judgements say so."
Addressing privacy concerns, he added: "Data would be stored only on the servers of the Bihar government and not on any other cloud. It is a foolproof system. We are open to suggestions by the court." He also revealed that the resources to conduct the survey have already been mobilised and 80% of the work has already been done.
"The State has already completed more than 80% of the survey work in some districts and less than 10% of work is pending. The entire machinery is working at ground level. There shall be no harm in completing the exercise subject to final adjudication of the dispute," said the state government.
"The time gap to complete the survey would adversely affect the survey since this would not be contemporaneous data. The stay of collection of data itself would cause a huge loss to the State since, if finally the action of the State is upheld, the State would be required to put logistics in place with additional expenditure and burden on the public exchequer," said the plea.
The top court said the high court has already gone into aspects like privacy and asked the state government to argue the matter before Patna High Court in July.