High Court sends notices on Telangana survey

Hyderabad: The Telangana government’s Intensive Household Survey came under the judicial scanner again on Monday .

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar of the Hyderabad High Court on Monday asked the Centre and the Telangana government to spell out their stand on a PIL seeking to restrain the Telangana government from using the recent intensive household survey data in deciding eligibility for welfare schemes of the state.

The High Court had permitted the government to conduct the survey on August 19 after recording its statement that it was voluntary.

The Hyderabad High Court bench dealing with a PIL by Dr J. Ram Mohan Chowdhary, a social activist who alleged the Telangana government conducted the Intensive Household Survey with an malafide intention in order to make people belonging to Seemandhra ineligible for welfare schemes implemented by the Centre and the state.

The issue came up before the High Court again and the petitioner submitted that in the absence of statutory power, the government had administered oath/affirmation during the survey for purpose of legalising the “quasiracial and tamperable data” which was ultra vires to the Oath Act, 1969.

The petitioner asked the court to direct the Centre to conduct an enquiry into all phases of the survey including pre-enumeration, enumeration and post-enumeration, Census questionnaire and its legality, including oath administration and security of census data.

He said that data elements collected during the survey were very personal in nature, the methods adapted were very arbitrary, including digitisation of data, by outsourcing it to a third party in violation of IT rules (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) 2011, made under Section 43A of IT act 2000.The bench granted four weeks to the respondents to file their counter affidavits on the plea.