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HC Rejects To Stay Survey; TS Govt Assures Answering Survey Voluntary

The Telangana government on Thursday cleared the air that the survey on August 19th is voluntary and not mandatory. The survey is done for sprucing up welfare programs and plug leakages and fix irregularities, the Govt informed the court.

Earlier, Justice Vilas Afzulpurkar of the Hyderabad High Court admitted the writ petitions field by Rajasekhar Tulasi and Seethalakshmi, called for records and posted the case for final disposal. R. Raghunandan Rao, senior counsel appearing for Seethalakshmi, contended that Parliament has already enacted the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 and the Collection of Statistics Rules 2011. He argued the State has no jurisdiction to conduct such surveys under Article 162 of the Constitution. The petitioner also contended the State Govt. has not followed the procedures that precede conduct of a survey like contacting the nodal officer and issuing notifications in advance.He also reminded the court that laws for data protection are non-existent in India and such random surveys risk sensitive private data of those surveyed into public domain.The State cannot obtain personal information of the petitioners in the guise of a survey for statistical purpose and then turn around and place that information in public domain where it can be misused, the counsel argued.

The petitioners pointed out that the manual circulated to enumerators required the officers to verify the bank passbooks, property details and sources of income. He said that the petitioners have a fundamental right of privacy which cannot be invaded by the State, by way of executive action, without any enacted law in support of such executive action.

To this, K. Rama Krishna Reddy, Advocate General for Telangana State made it clear that the government has the power to conduct the survey to see how its welfare schemes were implemented. He asserted that this was voluntary and there was no coercion. He said the money meant for welfare schemes for weaker sections were being swindled and the government wants to ascertain the facts. He reminded that the government had undertaken similar survey in 1995 and 2011 and placed those respective GOs before the bench.

The judge expressed a doubt whether the 2008 Act, the basis of the petitioner’s arguments, was only an enabling Act and can’t be a decider on whether or not a survey can be conducted by elected governments. Stating this, he rejected the plea to stay the order and recorded State counsel’s undertaking that the survey is voluntary and conveyed the decision that as long a sit’s voluntary, the survey doesn’t break any existing laws.

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