Supreme Court rejects a request to direct that each family’s missing person details be included in the census
Published Date – Mon, 15 May 23 at 1:32pm
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request to direct that missing person details for each family be included in the census.
Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala said the relief sought in the petition was related to policy issues.
“We’re going to dictate who includes this and that. It’s a matter of policy. Under Article 32 of the Constitution, the courts have no intention of interfering. Get fired,” the bench said.
The Supreme Court is hearing a plea from the Society and Evangelical Love Association (SEAL) seeking to take steps to insert a question in the upcoming census for details of each family’s missing person.
The request also seeks directions advising police to obtain details and biological samples from unidentified bodies across India for forensic and DNA analysis and matching with samples from relatives.
“The petitioners who work in this field are well aware that the actual number of missing persons is far higher than that mentioned in the National Criminal Records Bureau report.
“A large number of disappearances go unreported to the authorities, mainly due to a lack of awareness of the process required to lodge a disappearance complaint, or out of fear that making a complaint could damage the family’s reputation and cause a lot of trouble,” said advocate Robin Raju The request made says.
Officials said in January that the start of the decennial census had been postponed further until at least Sept. 30.
The housing inventory phase of the census and updating of the National Population Register (NPR) was originally scheduled to take place across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In a letter to all states, the General Register of India and the Office of the Census Commissioner said the date for freezing administrative borders has been extended until June 30.
According to the norms, the census can only be conducted three months after the borders of administrative units such as districts, streets, Tesil, Taluqa and police stations are frozen.
