Supreme Court questions Bihar on caste survey

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday questioned the Bihar government as to why it published its caste survey data but refused to restrain it from making public further data, and said it may examine if the state has power to conduct such an exercise.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and S V N Bhatti issued a formal notice on a batch of pleas challenging the August 1 order of the Patna High Court that gave the go-ahead for the caste survey in Bihar. The SC bench listed the matter in January, 2024. It rejected the petitioners' contention that the state government has already published some data preempting a stay. They sought a complete stay on further publication of data. "We are not staying anything at this moment. We cannot stop the state government or any government from taking 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 bench said. The top court, however, questioned the counsel for the Bihar government, "Why did you publish the data?" It said it may examine whether the state has the power to conduct such a survey.

Appearing for the petitioners, Senior advocate Aprajita Singh said there is breach of privacy in the matter and the High Court order is wrong. "This data should not be acted upon as it was collected illegally. The High Court has given a detailed judgement. But it is wrong on every point of law. The data has not been collected under law as laid down by this court. Even the executive order is not in conformity with the law laid down in the K S Puttaswamy judgement (2018 verdict on right to privacy)," Singh said.

To this, the bench said since the name and other identities of any individual have not been published, the argument that there was a breach of privacy may not be correct. "The more important issue for consideration of the court is breakdown of data and its availability to the public," the bench said, adding there are various aspects of the data but the state government has not released that.