New Delhi: Bihar’s second phase of the caste survey began on Wednesday, August 2, a day after the Patna high court dismissed all petitions opposing the move.
The second phase was to take place between April 15 and May 15. However, the court had issued an interim stay on the survey on May 4 to hear the petitions filed against the survey.
With the stay vacated, the second phase of the survey will be carried out in full swing, where data related to castes, sub-castes, and religions of all people is to be collected. In the first phase, enumerators carried had out a house-listing exercise, between January 7 and 12.
State government teachers are being engaged for conducting the survey. “The work of caste-based survey is being resumed from Wednesday so the deputation of the teachers would only be for the caste-based survey and no other administrative work. While deputing the teachers, keep this in mind that studies are not affected,” The Hindu quoted K. K. Pathak, additional chief secretary of the education department, as saying.
Patna district magistrate, Chandrashekhar Singh, told the newspaper that officials concerned in his district had been given instructions to resume the work. “Today, I inspected the work of the caste-based survey in Ward Number 10 of the Phulwarisharif area of Patna. In Patna district, there are 13.69 lakh families, and surveys of 9.35 lakh families have been completed. Now, only around four lakh families are left. We will complete the survey within one week itself,” he added.
A total of 15,000 officials have been deputed for carrying out the exercise in Patna.
Meanwhile, deputy chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav hit out at the voices opposing the survey. He said it was wrong on the part of “some political parties and casteist people” to assume that the survey is only in the interest of weaker sections.
“The reality is just the opposite, as it is in the interest of all sections of the people. If there has been economic and social backwardness and inequality in some sections due to caste, then the causes of this problem can be collected, researched, and diagnosed only on the basis of scientific statistics of caste. With the help of accurate data, wastage of time, money, resources, and effort can be avoided. People of all sections will get the benefit,” he assured those opposing the survey.
On the other hand, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislative party leader, Vijay Kumar Sinha, said his party had never opposed the survey. He pointed out that, in fact, it was the previous BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government that had taken the decision on the caste-based survey.
It may be noted that while the BJP’s Bihar unit has not openly opposed the survey, the party’s central leadership and the Union government have articulated, on numerous occasions, that they are opposed to such a survey.