Supreme Court declines to lift Patna High Court stay on caste survey

Justice Oka said the court will have to see whether what is being done is indeed a Census in the name of a survey. Justice Bindal added that many of the documents show it is indeed a Census.

The HC had on May 4 put the survey on hold. The High Court saw the Bihar government’s measure as an infringement upon Parliament rights and suggested that the exercise was essentially “a Census”, and raised questions regarding privacy and data security.

Appearing for the state before the apex court, senior advocate Shyam Divan said the High Court is in error and that only 10 more days were required to complete the survey.

The court, however, said issues of privacy are also involved and no interim relief can be granted. The bench also asked why it should issue notice if the HC is taking it up on July 3. “We will keep this pending. If the High Court does not take it up on (June) 3rd we will hear it,” the bench said.

As Divan urged the court to hear the matter, the court pointed out that the HC has recorded prima facie findings and added, “We are only saying that it is difficult to grant (interim relief) today. We are not saying that we will not hear it.”

Divan submitted that such a survey is a Constitutional imperative under Entry 45 of List III, which deals with “inquiries and statistics for the purposes of any of the matters specified in List II or List III”.

The court said that even assuming he is right, it will first have to be determined whether it is a survey or a Census.

Divan said a Census is for a certain period and is “100 percent”. While there is a penalty for not responding to a Census, the Bihar survey is voluntary and not on a 100-percent basis, he argued.

On the question of privacy, Divan said quantifiable data is required to implement state policies and the data will be stored only on servers of the state government, and not on any other cloud. It is a foolproof system, he said.

The bench, however, pointed out that the HC had said data privacy is a serious issue and wants to examine it.

Justice Oka said the HC had found several difficulties like the manner in which the data has to be counter-checked, etc. “This all requires to be tested,” he said while refusing to interfere at this stage.