The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the hearing on a petition challenging the Patna High Court order upholding the Bihar caste survey even as it declined to grant any status on order till the next date of hearing. A bench of Justices Sanjeev Khanna and S V N Bhatti which took up a petition filed by NGO ‘Ek Soch Ek Prayas’ agreed to keep it for the next week after Senior Advocate C S Vaidyanathan sought time, saying one more petition filed against the judgment was yet to be listed. As the court agreed to take it up again on August 14, the senior counsel urged it to direct that status quo be maintained in the meanwhile, but the bench did not agree. The SC bench said that it had not issued notice or even heard the petitioners. The High Court had on August 1 allowed the Bihar government to go ahead with its caste survey, taking into account its assurance on data protection in the Assembly. On May 4, the court stayed the caste survey through an interim order, saying that the state government was not competent to conduct the caste survey. The HC said that as the survey does not involve any coercion to divulge details — as announced in the Assembly — it does not violate “the rights of privacy of the individual, especially since it is in furtherance of a ‘compelling public interest’ which in effect is the ‘legitimate State interest’”. The HC court order came on six petitions challenging the caste survey on the grounds of data protection, competency of the state government to carry out the exercise and the expenditure of over Rs 500 crore on it.
