Caste Based Survey Reaches SC, Bihar Govt Files Caveat

The case of caste-based census has reached the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The Bihar government filed a caveat in the Supreme Court, stating that if any petition against the Patna High Court’s orders is filed in the Supreme Court, the court should not pass any order without hearing their side.

In fact, the Nitish government in Bihar had a major victory in the Patna High Court regarding the caste-based census on Tuesday.

The Patna High Court dismissed all petitions against the caste census.
Previously, on May 4, the High Court issued an interim stay on all petitions against the caste census.

However, now the court has given a clear victory to the Nitish government. The High Court upheld the decision of the Nitish government to conduct the caste census.

The Patna High Court had been hearing petitions against the caste-based census for the last five days. After hearing the arguments from both sides, the court reserved its verdict on July 7.

On August 1, the High Court issued an order on nearly 100 pages.

The significant aspect is that the court has dismissed all those petitions which demanded a stay on conducting the census, stating that the work of conducting the census is solely the responsibility of the central government and not the state government.

Last year, the Nitish government issued a notification for the caste-based census in Bihar and the work on it begun in January 2023. The caste-based census was conducted in two phases, the first in January and the second in April.

During the second phase, the Patna High Court issued an interim stay on the caste census. Due to this, the work in Bihar was halted, and the data collected until then was kept safe as per the court’s order.

The Nitish government has been in favor of conducting the caste-based census for a long time. The Nitish government then passed the proposal for caste-based census in the Bihar Legislative Assembly and Council on February 18, 2019, and then on February 27, 2020.

However, the central government was against it, and it filed an affidavit in the apex Court clarifying that the caste-based census would not be conducted. The central government stated that counting the OBC castes is a lengthy and difficult task.

The Bihar government then decided to conduct the caste-based census last year, where the work started in January 2023 and was supposed to be completed by May.