JUDGMENT :

DHANANJAYA Y CHANDRACHUD, J

1. Delay condoned.

2. Leave granted.

3. The first respondent was appointed as an Assistant by the appellant on the basis of a claim that he belonged to a Scheduled Tribe, namely, the Dhangad community. As the record shows, he belongs to the Dhangar community (a nomadic tribe) and not to the Dhangad community (listed as a Scheduled Tribe for Maharashtra). The first respondent claimed the benefit of belonging to a Schedule Tribe on the basis of a caste certificate dated 17 August 1984 issued by the Executive Magistrate, Hingna. The appellant called upon the first respondent to submit the caste certificate by a letter dated 15 February 2011. The appellant then addressed a communication on 14 July 2011 to the issuing authority which, by a communication dated 9 May 2014, informed the appellant that the caste certificate was not registered in its records. In August 2014, the first respondent was called upon to submit a fresh caste certificate. The first respondent did not submit a fresh caste certificate, but approached the issuing authority and then submitted a letter dated 14 August 2014 to the appellant whereby the issuing authority had stated that the caste certificate had been issued from the office of the Executive Magistrate. On 3 August 2015, the first respondent applied for verification of his caste certificate to the Scrutiny Committee. The first respondent submitted an application before the Scrutiny Committee on 15 February 2016. By an order dated 25 April 2016, the Scrutiny Committee invalidated the claim. The Scrutiny Committee noted, in the course of its order, that the first respondent had submitted an application on 15 February 2016 merely seeking protection of his service. The Scrutiny Committee observed that the first respondent was well aware of the fact that he did not belong to the Dhangad Scheduled Tribe, but belonged to the Dhangar Community, which is a nomadic tribe. It noted that the documents which had been submitted by the first respondent pertained only to the Dhangar Community and not to the Dhangad Scheduled Tribe. The documents pertaining to the first respondent and his father were scrutinized by the Committee which came to the conclusion that there was no merit in the claim of the first respondent of belonging to the Dhangad Scheduled Tribe.

4. Aggrieved by the order of the Scrutiny Committee, the first respondent instituted a writ petition, Writ Petition No 2846 of 2016 before the High Court of Judicature at Bombay Bench at Nagpur. The relief which was sought in the writ petition was for the protection of his services in view of a Full Bench decision of the High Court in Arun Sonone v State of Maharashtra, 2015 (1) Mh LJ 457 (Arun Sonone). The first respondent also challenged the order of the Scrutiny Committee.

5. The High Court, by its judgment and order dated 11 July 2016, issued a direction to the effect that the services of the first respondent were liable to be protected, in view of the judgment of its Full Bench in Arun Sonone.

6. Assailing the judgment of the High Court, it has been submitted on behalf of the appellant by Mr Dinesh Mathur, learned counsel, that the judgment of the Full Bench of the Bombay High Court in Arun Sonone has been overruled in a decision of a three-Judge Bench of this Court in Chairman and Managing Director, Food Corporation of India v Jagdish Balaram Bahira, (2017) 8 SCC 670 (FCI).

7. In its judgment in FCI, this Court has held:

“48…Where a candidate had been appointed to a reserved post on the basis of the claim that he or she was a member of the group for which the reservation is intended, the invalidation of the claim to belong to that group would, as a necessary consequence, render the appointment void ab initio. The rationale for this is that a candidate who would otherwise have to compete for a post in the general pool of unreserved seats had secured appointment in a more restricted competition confined to the reserved category a