During the famous Socialist Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) movement against the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, JP had made a clarion call to unite against emergency.
In fact, to do that in the mid-1970s, JP ‘requested’ all residents of Bihar and the Hindi belt to avoid using surname from their original name. Listening to his clarion call, many in Bihar did follow the ‘sermons’ of JP and the generation, which was born during mid-70s were without surnames or it was clubbed with two ‘names’ which became difficult for people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to judge the caste of a person by a surname. Hence came the jargon when it was a first meeting between two persons, “Kaun Jaat Ho Bhai?” (Which caste do you belong to brother?).
As Bihar planned to get a caste census, which could have helped the present dispensation to plan their political strategy better for the upcoming 2024 General Elections, the news of the Patna High Court staying Bihar’s Caste-Based Survey (CBS) on Thursday trickled down to field officers, districts which led to the confusion and uncertainty about the way ahead. While some districts decided to stop as soon as they heard of the order on the news, others are awaiting official formal orders from the State government to follow the court orders.
The Bihar Government was already in the middle of conducting the second phase of its much-touted CBS, which had begun on April 15 and was to be completed by May 15 this year. However, the Patna High Court on Thursday stayed the survey at least till July 3. Many districts had already completed their 60-70 per cent task of caste census. However, with this order of the Patna High Court, it is a big blow to those political parties who bank on caste-based vote-bank politics.
The data being collected was deep and almost decisive for any political party to sensitise and use it for election purpose. There seems to be no other purpose to do a caste-based census even after the implementation of Mandal Commission in late 1990s. After the first phase, the house counting exercise, the Bihar Government had begun the second phase, which was being conducted in both offline and online modes (through the Bijaga application).
The forms for the second phase was collecting information on the population of 214 castes in the State, along with a variety of socio-economic indicators, including educational qualification, nature/status of employment, vehicle ownership, land (agricultural and residential) ownership, computer and laptop usage, housing status, temporary migration status, and monthly income from all sources. All these will now have to be kept in abeyance after the Patna High Court order unless the Bihar State government approaches the Supreme Court and get the order of High Court reversed to get ‘this exercise of CBC moving.”
On Thursday, hearing a bunch of petitions, a division bench of Chief Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Madhuresh Prasad of the Patna High Court directed the state government to immediately stop the caste-based survey, and ensure that the data already collected are secured and not shared with anybody till final orders are passed. The Court has fixed July 3 as the next date for the hearing.
Yes, the data already collected by the State government definitely arises the larger question of the right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has held to be a facet of right to life, is a bigger question which needs the reply. The state of Bihar cannot attempt to carry out a caste census in the garb of a survey, especially when the state has absolutely no legislative competence and, in that circumstance, neither can an executive order be sustained under Article 162 of the Constitution of India, the court clarified.
Meanwhile, the State government in its previous cabinet decision recently cleared the appointments of nearly two lakh school teachers in the State. Is the division of caste-based politics going deeper down to explore more vote banks on caste basis to counter the flexing muscles of Bharatiya Janata Party? If so, it will be really interesting times ahead before the 2024 General Elections for common people to observe whether caste or double-engine wins.
