The burden of proof for establishing a Scheduled Tribe claim lies with the applicant, who must provide credible evidence and approach the court with clean hands.

JUDGMENT :

Prafulla S. Khubalkar, J.

Heard.

2. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith and heard finally by consent of parties.

3. The petitioner has assailed the order dated 18^th March 2024 passed by respondent No.2 Scrutiny Committee invalidating his claim for ‘Tokre Koli’, Scheduled Tribe, in a proceeding under Section 7 of the Maharashtra Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, De-notified Tribes (Vimukta Jatis), Nomadic Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Special Backward Category (Regulation of Issuance and Verification of) Caste Certificate Act, 2000, (for short ‘the Maharashtra Act No.XXIII of 2001’).

4. Claiming to be an elected Sarpanch of village Kheddigar, the petitioner’s tribe claim came to be referred to respondent No.2 Scrutiny Committee for validation of ‘Tokre Koli’ Scheduled Tribe certificate.

5. By the impugned order, the Committee has observed that the petitioner failed to establish his claim on the basis of documentary evidence as well as on account of failure to prove his affinity with ‘Tokre Koli’ tribe. While dealing with the documentary evidence, the Committee has assigned varied reasons for discarding the documents relied upon by the petitioner. The Committee has noted its inferences about interpolation in the documents submitted by the petitioner and about the suspicious nature of documents on the basis of which the petitioner tried to establish his claim. The impugned order refers to the documents submitted by the petitioner, mentioning the caste as Koli, Hindu Koli, Tokre Koli. The committee recorded an inference that there are no documents of pre- independence era and the documents relied upon by the petitioner are suspicious and fabricated. The committee has, therefore, invalidated the claim holding the petitioner liable for action under Sections 10 and 11 of the Maharashtra Act No.XXIII of 2001.

6. Advocate M. V. Thorat, appearing for the petitioner vehemently submitted that the impugned order is bad and illegal being passed without considering the vital documentary evidence. He submitted that the committee adopted an erroneous approach to discard the vital documents in support of his tribe claim and that the committee relied upon some documents which are not related to the family members of the petitioner. He invited our attention to the documents filed vide application dated 12^th July 2024 bearing Civil Application no. 6912 of 2024 for production of documents, which inter alia include the documents about his election as Sarpanch and the documents of the years 1926, 1941, 1942, 1963 and 1944 relied upon by the petitioner in support of his tribe claim. He filed the colour photocopies of these pre-independence era documents. By relying upon these additional documents, he also tried to put forward a case for remand of the matter to the committee for fresh decision.

7. Per contra, Ms. P.J. Bharad, learned Assistant Government Pleader for respondent nos.1 to 5, strongly opposed the petition and justified theimpugned order. She strenuously submitted that the petitioner utterly failed to establish his tribe claim. Her submissions are manifold, including, i) That the petitioner has engaged in acts of deceit and fraud, which became clear from the interpolations in the documents of the petitioner. She invited our attention to the documents from the original record, which shows interpolations/insertions in the documents of the years 1926 and 1941.

ii) She also invited our attention to the mischievous conduct of the petitioner, who suppressed the fact that he was earlier granted a tribe certificate dated 21.02.2009, which was under scrutiny before respondent No.2 Committee, however, before decision of its verification, the petitioner again obtained another tribe certificate dated 22.11.2021 and the same was also submitted for verification.

iii) She submitted that the the petitioner not disclosed in the petition the order dated 26^th September 2022 passed by the committee observing that the original residence of the petitio