The HC held that the state authorities’s initiative is ‘completely legitimate and legally competent’ and doesn’t violate the basic proper to privateness of any particular person as it’s within the nature of ‘compelling public curiosity’.
A division bench of Chief Justice Ok Vinod Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy held the state authorities as legally competent to conduct such a survey, which is backed by a legit goal of offering ‘growth with justice’ to the folks as had been talked about by the governor in his deal with to each Homes of the state’s legislature.
“The goal and function of caste survey is to establish the Backward Lessons, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in order to uplifting them and guaranteeing equal alternatives to them, not solely by an affirmative motion, but in addition in offering employment, guaranteeing admission to instructional establishments and so on. and such endeavours are within the nature of compelling public curiosity which overrides the proper to privateness and therefore such surveys can’t be brushed apart,” the court docket remarked.
The court docket distinguished this survey from a census and held that caste survey doesn’t ponder any coercive train for divulging particulars of an individual and additional held that the goal of such survey is in ‘legit curiosity of the state.
HC: No risk to information safety
Twelve writ petitions had been filed difficult the legality of caste survey initiated on June 6, 2022, on the grounds that it’s a census within the garb of a survey and the state authorities has no legislative competence to conduct a census, which is unique functioning of Parliament underneath the Census Act of 1948; that such a survey violates the basic proper to privateness of a person assured by the Structure and the viability of expenditure of Rs500 crore from the state’s contingency fund for it.
The division bench upheld the state authorities’s argument that its energy for conducting caste surveys comes from a brand new regulation, particularly Assortment of Statistics Act, 2008. The court docket held that underneath this regulation, the state can gather info by finishing up such train for which the census and survey can be utilized interchangeably. The court docket additionally rejected the rivalry that such a survey violates the basic proper to privateness and held that many of the private information associated to age, intercourse, parentage, residence, and so on are already in public area. The court docket additionally dismissed the plea that there’s a risk in regards to the safety of knowledge as collected by the enumerators.
The court docket discovered substance within the plea of the state authorities, which cited the Constituent Meeting debates and the well-known Supreme Courtroom judgment in Indira Sawhney case in addition to mammoth statistics of certificates issued by the state, indicating the necessity for figuring out giant inhabitants who require social and financial uplift. Senior advocate Aprajita Singh, Abhinav Shrivastav, Dinu Kumar, Munna Prasad Dixit and Yadunandan Bansal had argued for the petitioners whereas advocate basic P Ok Shahi, further AG Anjani Kumar, Vikas Kumar, Alok Kumar Rahi and Manish Kumar represented the state.
