Chief Minister Nitish Kumar secured significant relief on August 1 after the Patna High Court dismissed all petitions filed against the decision of the Bihar Government to conduct a caste-based survey. A Division Bench of Chief Justice K.V. Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy upheld the caste-based survey and allowed the State government to continue with the survey.
The court said in its order: “We find the action of the State to be perfectly valid, initiated with due competence, with the legitimate aim of providing ‘Development with Justice,’ as proclaimed in the address of both Houses and the actual survey to have neither exercised nor contemplated any coercion to divulge the details and having passed the test of proportionality, thus not having violated the rights of privacy of the individual especially since it is in the furtherance of a ‘compelling public interest’ which in effect is the ‘legitimate State interest’.”
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