NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court rejected the plea to restrain the Bihar government from publishing further information of the caste survey. The court also pointed out that it is wrong to prevent the state government from taking policy decisions.

The court postponed the hearing of a batch of pleas challenging the constitutionality of the Bihar government's caste-based survey till January next year. A bench of Justices Sanjeev Khanna and S V N Bhatti verbally clarified that they cannot stop the decision taken by any government.

The Bihar government published the caste census on October 2, 2023. The census revealed that 36 per cent of the state's 13.1 crore people belong to very backward classes, 27.1 per cent to backward classes, 19.7 per cent to scheduled castes and 1.7 per cent to scheduled tribes.

However, senior advocate Aparajita Singh, appearing for the petitioners, said the Bihar government's decision to seek caste information was against the K S Puttaswamy judgment which recognized the right to privacy as part of the fundamental right to life under Article 21. Senior advocate Shyam Dewan, appearing for the government, said that there was no ban on publication of census data by any court.

Observing that the matter needs to be heard at length, the bench sent a notice to the state government on the petitions and adjourned the hearing to January. The court also stated that the census does not consider the issue of privacy as names and other information are not published.