Supreme Court refuses to restrain Bihar govt from publishing further data from caste survey

The bench said since the name and other identities of any individual have not been published, therefore the argument that there was a breach of privacy may not be correct.

Image of the Supreme Court, used for representational purposes only. (Photo | PTI)

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to put a stay on further publication of data related to caste survey by the Bihar government, saying it cannot stop any government from taking a policy decision. Asserting that the top court is not staying “anything” at the moment, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti adjourned a batch of pleas against the Bihar government for January next year.

The top court also issued a formal notice on petitions against the August 1 order of the Patna High Court that allowed the state government to go ahead with the caste survey. “We are not staying anything at this moment. We cannot stop the state government or any government from making a policy decision. That would be wrong… We are going to examine the other issue, regarding the power of the state government to conduct this exercise,” the top court said.

The petitioners had approached the top court seeking a complete stay on further publication of data. The bench also rejected their submission that the state government has already published some data pre-empting a stay. During the hearing, senior advocate Aprajita Singh, representing the petitioners, argued that there is a breach of privacy in the matter and that the High Court order was “wrong”.

However, the bench said that since the name and other identities of no individual have been published, the argument that there was a breach of privacy may not be correct. “The important issue for consideration of the court is breakdown of data and its availability to the public,” it said.

Setting in motion the much-talked-about ‘caste census’ (actually a survey) in Bihar on October 2, the Nitish Kumar government released the caste data months ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.
It involved door-to-door surveys and covered 12.70 crore people divided among 204 castes across 38 districts of the state. 

The exercise was carried out in two phases — the first from January to April involving the counting of the households and the second from April to May 31, where information on the caste, skill, income and religion of the individuals was collected. The whole exercise was carried out at an estimated cost of about Rs 500 crore. 

The survey report will be made public in June. The data revealed that OBCs and EBCs constitute a whopping 63 per cent of the state’s total population, with Extremely Backward Classes at 36 per cent and Other Backward Classes at 27.13 per cent.

SC observations

• The court cannot stop a government from making policy decisions
• The top court will examine if the state government has the power to conduct this exercise
• Since the name and other identities of no individual have been published, the argument that there was a breach of privacy may not be correct

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