Patna High Court on Tuesday upheld Bihar’s caste survey. The first phase of this two-part survey, under which a household counting exercise was taken up, was conducted by the Bihar government in January this year.
A Bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy delivered the verdict on several petitions challenging the caste-based survey.
All petitions challenging Bihar government’s caste-based survey have been dismissed. With the dismissal of all petitions, the interim stay on caste survey in Bihar which was granted by Patna HC order of May 4, gets vacated.
The Patna High Court had on May 4 this year stayed the caste survey with immediate effect, asking the authorities to preserve the data collected so far. The court had noted that the survey was a census in the garb of a survey, the likes of which only the union government had the exclusive power to carry out under the Census Act, 1948.
In another setback for the Bihar government days later, the Supreme Court also had refused to lift the stay on the caste-based survey.
The decision to conduct the caste survey was taken by the then NDA government in Bihar headed by Nitish Kumar in June last year. The JD(U) leader later dumped the BJP and formed the Mahagathbandhan government with RJD, Congress and others.
The state government started its caste-based survey in Bihar on January 7. The project cost, designed to be conducted in two phases, was estimated to be Rs 500 crore.
The first round was conducted between January 7 and 21, and the ongoing survey began on April 16 and was to end on May 15.
Comments
0 comment