Overview
- The Supreme Court, which sat Friday under Chief Justice Surya Kant with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi, dismissed a public-interest plea that sought to stop a caste-based headcount.
- The petitioner asked the court to block the proposed caste enumeration and to order policies that tie resource sharing to population responsibility with incentives for single-child families.
- Chief Justice Surya Kant criticized the filing for using rude language, asking who wrote the petition and calling it “badtameezi ki bhasa.”
- The bench declined to issue any stay or broader directions, so there is no ruling on the merits and no halt to census planning.
- The 2027 national census is planned to include a full caste count for the first time since 1931, and the court had also declined in February to entertain a separate challenge to the methodology.