After the caste based survey, Bihar government has started taking policy decisions like increasing reservation for OBCs.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard the matter on Tuesday and said that the state should make the data public to allow people to challenge it.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said the main concern is to what extent the data collected by the government can be put in the public domain so that it does not violate the right to privacy of the citizens.
Advocate Raju Ramachandran, appearing for the petitioners challenging the validity of the survey, while seeking an interim order, stressed that the State is moving expeditiously to take a decision based on the findings of the survey.
Ramachandran said, “We want to argue for interim relief after placing the census report on record. The report is being implemented and reservation has been increased. “Since things are moving rapidly we would like to argue for interim relief.”
The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned the Bihar government, ‘to what extent can it withhold the data of the caste survey conducted in the state.’
The top court has made this comment while refusing to immediately hear the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the caste-based survey conducted in Bihar. The bench of Justices Sanjeev Khanna and Dipankar Dutta said that it is not possible to hear the case next week.
The bench said that we also have some limitations, we will consider your demand, but it is not possible next week. The bench made this comment while rejecting the demand for a detailed hearing next week to pass an interim order in the matter.
The bench has fixed January 29 for hearing the case. However, the top court told the lawyers of all the parties that the legal issue in the case i.e. the veracity of the High Court’s decision will have to be examined. Also asked to present the published survey report.
Earlier, senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, appearing for the petitioner, told the bench that there was an urgent need to hear the matter.
He told the bench that the Bihar government has published the survey report and to implement it has also increased the limit of reservation in the state.
He said that he is ready to argue in detail to seek interim relief in the case after the survey report that has been published is presented.
Giving this argument, the senior advocate demanded the Supreme Court to hear the case next week so that an interim order can be passed.
Concerned about public access to survey findings
Additionally, Justice Khanna said that ‘he was concerned about the public accessibility of the survey findings.
He said that what worried me more than the survey report was that the details of the data are not generally made available to the public, which causes a lot of problems. In such a situation, the question is to what extent can the government withhold the survey data?
Claim of making caste survey report public
In response, senior advocate Shyam Diwan, appearing for the Bihar government, told the bench that the report of the caste survey conducted in the state is public.
On this, Justice Khanna said that ‘if the report is completely publicly available, then it is a different matter. ‘Details of the data should be made generally available to allow people to challenge any particular findings.’
Patna High Court’s decision challenged
The decision of the Patna High Court has been challenged in the Supreme Court, in which on August 2, the Bihar government had justified the caste-based survey in the state and allowed it to continue.
NGOs ‘Youth for Equality’ and ‘Ek Soch, Ek Prayas’ and others have filed an appeal in the apex court against this decision of the High Court.
However, the apex court has repeatedly rejected the demand of the petitioners to ban the High Court decision and the Bihar government from publishing the survey report.