The Bihar Caste Survey (Bihar Jaati Adharit Ganana) is a state-level data collection exercise, explicitly termed a "survey" to distinguish it from a "census," which is a subject reserved for the Union government under Entry 69 of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. The survey was notified by the Government of Bihar on June 6, 2022, and was conducted in two phases between January 7, 2023, and August 2023, with results released on October 2, 2023. Its origin lies in the need for updated, empirical data on the socio-economic and educational status of various castes, as the last comprehensive caste data for all groups was from the 1931 Census.
The mechanism involved the General Administration Department (GAD) of Bihar collecting data digitally using a mobile application called Bijaga. The survey collected information on caste, religion, and economic status. The exercise was challenged in the Patna High Court, which initially stayed it on May 4, 2023, citing a potential violation of the right to privacy under Article 21. However, the High Court later upheld its validity on August 1, 2023, allowing the data to be published.
The survey connects directly to the politics of reservations and the Mandal Commission report, which relied on the old 1931 data. The key finding that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute 63.14% of the state's population led to a recent change: the state government passed the Bihar Reservation (Amendment) Act, 2023, to increase the total reservation quota to 65%. This amendment, however, was later declared unconstitutional by the Patna High Court on June 20, 2024, for breaching the 50% ceiling set by the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992).