After staying caste survey, Patna HC rejects Bihar’s plea for early hearing

On May 4, the HC had stayed the ongoing caste survey with immediate effect and fixed July 3 as the next date of hearing on the matter.

Days after ordering an interim stay on the caste survey in Bihar, the Patna high court on Tuesday rejected the state government’s plea for an early hearing in the matter.

The Patna high court. (HT Photo)

The hearing will now take place on July 3, as scheduled .

On May 4, the HC had stayed the ongoing caste survey with immediate effect and fixed July 3 as the next date of hearing on the matter.

Later, the state government filed an interlocutory application (IA) before the bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Madhuresh Prasad on May 6, pleading that “the matter be disposed of as early as possible as the interim order had in detail adjudicated the issue and after that not much remained to serve any meaningful purpose”.

The court had agreed to hear the IA on Tuesday, but did not grant the plea for an early hearing.

Though advocate general PK Shahi pleaded that the state government be allowed to complete the caste survey exercise, which was stopped midway after the court’s stay order, till final adjudication of the case and no data would be made public, the court refused to accept the plea.

“We will hear the matter on July 3 only. There is no need to change that. We cannot allow the state to go ahead with the survey even with the undertaking that the data will not be shared,” said the Chief Justice after brief argument and dismissed the petition.

The high court, while staying the caste survey, had directed the Bihar government “to ensure that the data already collected are secured and not shared with anybody till final orders are passed in the writ petition”.

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

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

After the stay order, the state government had immediately ordered district magistrates to ensure compliance of the court order. However, it wanted to explore all legal options.

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 Mahagathbandhan government – an alliance of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and others — had 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.

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