The court ruled that caste certificate verification is not limited by the date of appointment, emphasizing the necessity of addressing fraudulent claims to uphold constitutional rights.

ORDER :

(G. Jayachandran, J.) :

The Division Bench of this Court consisting of Hon'ble Judges J.Nisha Banu and N.Mala, J.J. upon hearing this Writ Petition had on 24.08.2023 delivered a split verdict. Hence, case is placed before the Third Judge for consideration by order of the Hon'ble Chief Justice vide order dated 19.09.2023.

2. The facts of the case in short, as pleaded by parties are:

The petitioner herein got appointment in Bank of Baroda in the year 1988 under quota for ST community by producing the certificate given by the Tasildar, Attur, as if he belong to Kattunaiyakan community which is a ST community. His community certificate was verified by the State Level Scrutiny Committee(in short as “SLSC”) on the direction of this Court following the dictum laid in Kumari Madhuri Patil and another v. Additional Commissioner, Tribal Development and others reported in [(1994)6 SCC 241] case. The SLSC concluded that the petitioner does not belong to ST community and the certificate, he produced to get appointment is not correct. It also ordered the said certificate must be confiscated and departmental action must be initiated against him.

3. Contending that the verification of caste certificate cannot be done at the fag end of the service and should confine only to the persons who joined service after 1995 and not before 1995, the petitioner had argued that the impugned proceedings of the SLSC to be quashed and the petitioner must be paid his retirement benefits. The OM dated 24/12/2020 issued by the Parliamentary Committee on the welfare of Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes through Lok Sabha Secretariat had relied by the petitioner which reiterates that verification of the ST caste certificate to be done only for those employees, who were appointed after 1995. Kumari Maduri Patil judgment dated 02/09/1994 can only be implemented prospective.

4. On behalf of the State, it was argued that there is no time limit prescribed for verification of doubtful ST community certificate. Neither in Kum. Mathuri Patil judgment nor in the OM of the Central Government Department, there is prohibition for verification of community certificates of persons, who had joined service prior to 1995. On receipt of materials adequate to suspect the genuineness of the community given by the employee, the said community certificate need to be verified to prevent the abuse of social welfare policy meant for underprevilage strata of the society.

5. Upon hearing the rival submissions, the Hon'ble Mrs. Justice J. Nisha Banu allowed the writ petition. The reason given by the learned Judge for allowing the writ petition is stated as below:-

“10. The search for answers to the questions surrounding the problem culminated in the issue of, inter alia, the O.M. dated 24.12.2020 of the Lok Sabha Secretariat (Parliamentary Committee on the welfare of scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). The above O.M. has now become a matter of public policy. It has accommodated the principles enunciated in the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the Kumari Madhuri Patil's case(cited supra). The O.M. stipulates 1995 as the cut off date from which verification process to check the veracity of the caste certificates of candidates availing reservations shall be taken up.

11. It also contemplated immediate verification of the truthfulness of caste claims for new admissions/appointments under the constitutional rights of reservations to the vulnerable communities. It directed completion of the verifications about the veracity of caste/community certificates within 2 months. In effect a fair proposal was drawn through the O.M. to address the problem confounding the abuse of the scheme. The decision to limit the period of exercise to 25 years preceding the date of the issue of O.M. is a just and fair balancing act in the light of the observations in the Kumari Madhuri Patil's case(ci