Supreme Court dismisses Maharashtra govt plea to disclose 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census data

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, dismissed a petition filed by the Maharashtra government seeking a direction to the Central government to disclose raw data pertaining to the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) [State of Maharashtra v. Union of India]..In light of the submission that the data was not accurate or usable, the Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and CT Ravikumar held,"We fail to understand how a mandamus can be issued to the Centre to make available to the data to Maharashtra for reservation. Such direction will only create confusion. Thus we decline to use our writ jurisdiction in the case...".The Maharashtra government had invoked the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Supreme Court after deciding to conduct a Socio Economic and Caste Census across the State through the Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes (MSCBC).The State Legislative Assembly had this year passed a resolution in the House to approach the Centre for 2011 census data in order to compile empirical data on the OBC population in the State. The 2011 census data has not been released till date by the Centre, citing errors..The Centre had issued a notification on January 7, 2020 prescribing information to be collected for the upcoming 2021 census which includes information relating to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but does not refer to any other category of caste. The exclusion of information regarding any other caste for the upcoming census is a "conscious policy decision" taken by the government, the Centre had said.In an affidavit filed recently, the Centre thus urged the top court to not issue any directions to the Census Department to include enumeration of socio-economic data pertaining to Backward Classes "since it would tantamount to interfering with a policy decision as framed under Section 8 of the SC-ST Act.".Census of Backward Classes "will" be fraught with inaccuracies: Centre urges Supreme Court to not include OBCs in 2021 caste census.Appearing for the Central government today, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued that knowledge of sub-castes is highly inadequate and that phonetic similarity of castes can also lead to miscalculation. He added,"2011 data will mislead the Census Commission due to the inherent flaws. State could have appointed a commission on their own to identify the number of OBCs therein and what is the status of political backwardness or political under-representation...please don't order us to furnish raw data to State, since we also have not furnished it to the public. It is that worthless.".Senior Advocate Shekhar Naphade, appearing for the Maharashtra government accepted that there was no provision in law to call for the data, "But the very concept of census must also include the caste census," he said.He also argued that the Centre claiming that the 2011 SECC was riddled with errors amounts to it being judge in its own cause. However, the Court said,"You are under Article 32. You have to apply under RTI. How can we look into this at this stage here? How can you decide the errors? You (Maharashtra) have not done any enumeration. We are going to area which is not permissible. We cannot take this writ petition forward.".The Court eventually ordered,"The fact that Maharashtra has to adhere to triple test requirement before implementing the reservation does not mean Centre can be directed to share such data which is unusable...Thus the plea is dismissed.".[Read a live account of the hearing]