Karnataka High Court declines to stop caste survey, but imposes conditions for conducting it

While declining to interdict the ongoing Social and Educational Survey-2025, the High Court of Karnataka on Thursday imposed several conditions, including that the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes Commission should issue a public notification clearly informing the people that the “participation in this survey is voluntary and no person is obligated to disclose any of the information sought”.

Also, the court directed that the commission should ensure that it has to be necessarily communicated to all the people that there is no obligation to them to disclose any information in the survey at the threshold stage by the enumerators before asking the people to answer any queries.

No persuading or cajoling

Further, the court made it clear that if a participant declines to participate in the survey, the enumerators will take no further steps to persuade or cajole the participant or compel the person to divulge any explanations for not participating in the survey.

A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice C.M. Joshi, passed the interim order on a batch of petitions filed by the Vokkaligara Sangha, the Akhila Karnataka Brahmana Mahasabha, and several members of Veerashaiva Lingayat Mahasabha, and other individuals challenging the authority of the State government and the commission to conduct such a survey.

No sharing with govt.

Also, the Bench directed the commission to file an affidavit within a period of one working day, disclosing the steps taken for ensuring that the data collected is kept confidential and not accessible to any person, including the State government, other than the commission.

The petitioners, who have termed the survey “nothing but a caste census” by the State government through the commission, have claimed that the State government has no authority in law to conduct census. The petitioners have also complained that collection of Aadhaar and other data is contrary to the right to privacy of people.

However, the commission, during an earlier hearing, had told the court that participation in the survey would not be mandatory and that it would take all necessary steps to protect the collected data.