SC agrees for urgent hearing to plea challenging Caste Census in Bihar

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to give an urgent hearing to the petition challenging the Bihar government's notification for conducting the Caste Census in the state.

A lawyer mentioned the plea before the Supreme Court seeking an urgent hearing of the petition challenging the Bihar Government's notification for conducting the Caste Census in the State. A bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said that it will hear the petition on Friday.

Meanwhile, another petition was moved in the Supreme Court recently by a social worker Akhilesh Kumar through Advocates Barun Kumar Sinha and Abhishek, who, in his petition, said, "That the cause of action arose on/from the impugned Notification dated 06.06.2022 issued by Deputy Secretary, Government of Bihar, whereby decision of the Government to conduct caste census has been communicated to the media and public at large."

The petitioner Akhilesh Kumar through Advocates Barun Kumar Sinha and Abhishek said that the decision of the State of Bihar is illegal, arbitrary, irrational, unconstitutional and without the authority of law.

According to the petitioner's submission, there are a total of more than 200 castes in Bihar and all those castes are classified as General Category, OBC, EBC, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes.

According to plea, in the state of Bihar, there are 113 castes which are known as OBC and EBC, eight castes are included in the category of Upper Caste, there are about 22 sub castes which are included in Scheduled Caste category and there are 29 about Sub Castes which are included in the scheduled category.

"The impugned Notification accords differential treatment without intelligible differentia to illegal decision of State of Bihar is illegal, arbitrary irrational and unconstitutional," the petitioner Akhilesh Kumar said, who urged the top court to issue a direction for quashing the impugned Notification dated January 6, 2022 and to direct the authority concerned to refrain from conducting the caste census as it is against the basic structure of the Constitution of India.