NEW DELHI: Patna high court on Tuesday held a caste survey being conducted by the Bihar government as valid and legal.

The court also dismissed petitions that were filed against the caste survey started by the state government in June 2022.
Talking to reporters outside the court after a hearing by a bench headed by chief justice K Vinod Chandran, advocate Dinu Kumar, a counsel for one of the petitioners, said that he will move Supreme Court against the judgement.

“We do not know the details of the order. In the open court, the bench said it was rejecting all the petitions,” he said.
Advocate Ritika Sharma said that the high court has dismissed all petitions and now the government can continue with the caste census. “We will approach the Supreme Court now,” she added.
Stating that BJP had supported the caste census, Bihar LoP Vijay Kumar Sinha said, “They (Bihar Government) had failed to explain the objective of caste census and further failed to put the report in the public domain.”
Earlier, in an appeal filed before the top court against the May 4 order of the high court, the Bihar government had said the stay will adversely affect the entire exercise.
The state government had maintained that the collection of caste-based data is a constitutional mandate under Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution.
The first round of caste survey in Bihar was conducted between January 7 and 21.