D. Y. CHANDRACHAUD, J.

( 1 ) RULE, by consent of Counsel returnable forthwith. Counsel appearing on behalf of the Respondents waives service. By consent of Counsel and at the request of Counsel taken up for hearing.

( 2 ) THE Petitioner claims to have instituted these proceedings in the public interest to espouse the claim of persons belonging to the Thakur community which is listed as a Scheduled tribe in the Presidential notification issued under Article 342 of the constitution. The relief that has been sought is the issuance of a writ of Mandamus to the State Government to appoint Judicial officers as Chairpersons of Scrutiny Committees functioning under the control of the Tribal Development Department. These committees are entrusted with the function of verifying the authenticity of the claims of persons who seek recognition as members of a Scheduled Tribe. There is a challenge in these proceedings to a Government Resolution dated 7th December 2005. A declaration has been sought that the Scrutiny Committee at Nasik has no jurisdiction to apply the socio-cultural affinity test once the Committee comes to the conclusion that the documentary evidence on record shows the tribe of a person as Thakur. Finally, a direction is sought to the State to appoint Research officers possessing qualifications laid down in the G. R. dated 9th july 1998.

( 3 ) IN support of the plea that Judicial Officers should be appointed as Chairpersons of Scrutiny Committees investigating into Scheduled Tribe status, reliance has been placed on a judgment of a Division Bench of this Court dated 26th September 1986 in Maharashtra Adivasi Thakur Jamat Seva Mandal, chalisgaon vs. State of Maharashtra (Writ Petitions 917 and 2088 of 1986) in which the following observations were made:"the proceedings before the Scrutiny Committee are quasi-judicial in nature. Therefore, in our view also the chairman of the Scrutiny Committee should be a District judge so that the people will have confidence in the committee. The Chairman will obviously be assisted by two other members who are experts in the field. Thus expert advice will be available to the Committee, while deciding the question. This might allay all the apprehensions about the decisions of the Scrutiny committee and the procedure followed by it. We hope that the Government will consider this suggestion favourably. "similarly, reliance has also been placed on a decision of a Division bench of this Court rendered on 14th September 2004 in a batch of cases (Amol Narayan Wakkar vs. State of Maharashtra, Writ petition 6048 of 2004 and other Writ Petitions ). The Division bench in that case set aside an order of the Scrutiny Committee disposing of nearly 200 cases by what was termed as a "common cryptic order". The Division Bench observed that the order did not furnish reasons and there was no analysis of the documents that were relied upon. This Court noted that there was a serious complaint of the manner in which the Scrutiny Committees decided cases, leading to a proliferation of litigation under Article 226 of the constitution. The Division Bench called upon the State government to consider the suggestion as to whether the scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Scrutiny Committees should be reconstituted by appointing at least one judicial officer thereon who would preside over the Committees. The suggestion of the Division Bench was in the following terms:"having regard to the fact that the role, duty and functioning of these committees is akin to the judicial work we feel that it would be desirable that at least one member of the committee should be a trained judicial officer. We, therefore, suggest to the State Government to consider reconstituting the Caste/tribe Scrutiny committee and appoint at least one judicial officer on these committees to be presided over by such a judicial officer. The State Government is directed to consider this suggestion and take appropriate decision expeditiously and