Patna HC to hear plea to prepone Bihar caste survey hearing on May 9

The Patna high court on Thursday directed the Bihar government to immediately stop the caste-based survey and ensure that the data already collected are secured and not shared with anybody till final orders are passed

The Patna high court will hear a plea of the Bihar government for early hearing in the case pertaining to caste survey on May 9, said a senior judicial functionary appearing for the government.

The Patna high court had earlier fixed July 3 as the next date of hearing and the date is listed on the court website. (File Photo)

Accepting the state government’s request for early hearing after Advocate General PK Shahi mentioned the matter through an interim application, the division bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and justice Madhuresh Prasad agreed to hear the matter on May 9.

Advocate Abhinav Srivastav, who appeared for the petitioner, said the court would hear the plea of the government to prepone the hearing in the matter.

The HC had earlier fixed July 3 as the next date of hearing and the date is listed on the court website.

The high court had on Thursday directed the Bihar government “to immediately stop the caste-based survey and ensure that the data already collected are secured and not shared with anybody till final orders are passed in the writ petition”.

While the government immediately ordered district magistrates to ensure compliance of the court order and senior officials got down to studying the verdict, the Advocate General also moved an interim application for early hearing.

The order triggered a war of words between the ruling Grand Alliance (GA) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with both blaming each other for trying to stall the process of caste-based enumeration in the state.

The first round of the caste survey was conducted between January 7 and 21. The second round started on April 15 and was scheduled to continue till May 15.

The GA government – an alliance of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JD-U)), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and the Congress — ordered the survey after the Centre declined the request of an all-party delegation, including the BJP, from Bihar for a headcount of social groups other than SCs, STs and religious minorities as part of the census.

On Friday, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad hit out at the BJP, saying, “the people of the country have understood the deviousness of the BJP on the issue of caste census”. “Caste census is a demand of the country’s majority. It is bound to take place,” the former Bihar CM tweeted.

“Why is the BJP so afraid of a headcount of the ‘bahusankhyak’ backward classes. Whoever opposes such a survey, is against the ideals of equality and humanity and a votary of social discrimination, poverty and unemployment,” he said.

Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Modi asked why Lalu could not do it during the 15-year RJD rule in the state. “The decision to hold caste survey was a decision of the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government, which included the BJP. The reality is that the intention of chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad is not clear on caste survey or reservation to the extremely Backward classes in the local body election. They are only misleading people. Even states like Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, West Bengal and a few others, which have non-BJP governments, also never tried to go in for caste survey,” he added.

The high court stay order came while hearing a petition by the Youth for Equality after the Supreme Court directed it to look into the matter and dispose of the case in three days.

The court observed that “the caste-based survey is a census in the garb of a survey, the power to carry out this is exclusively on Parliament which has also enacted a Census Act, 1948”.

“There is also the question raised of data integrity and security which has to be more elaborately addressed by the State. Prima facie, we are of the opinion that the State has no power to carry out a caste-based survey, in the manner in which it is fashioned now, which would amount to a census, thus impinging upon the legislative power of Parliament,” it observed.