O R D E R

This petition is filed by the father of certain Abishek Charan for issuing a residence/nativity certificate for his son. According to the petitioner, Abishek Charan has secured a seat in medicine (UG Programme) in Venkateswara Medical College, Puducherry. The seat was allotted to him through centralised counselling by the 4th respondent. At the time of joining the course, Abishek Charan, inter alia, may have to produce his residence/nativity certificate.

1.2 Abishek Charan approached the Tahsildar, Bahour, for issuing him with a nativity/residence certificate, and the Tahsildar, vide his order, dated, 24.08.2023, has rejected the same. This order was challenged before the appellate authority, namely the Deputy Collector (Revenue) South, who has passed the impugned order on 15.09.2023, confirming the proceedings of the Tahsildar. This is under challenge in this writ petition.

2. The learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that:

a) Both the parents of the petitioner hail from Puducherry, that their son Abishek Charan too was born in Puducherry, and that owing to his avocation, the petitioner with his family temporarily lived outside Puducherry. Even as the petitioner was away from Puducherry, his parents continued to be in Puducherry. And, Abishek Charan did his 9th and 10th standards in Puducherry, staying with his grand parents.

b) The Tahsildar and also the appellate authority had relied selectively on selected parts of the Order of the Revenue Department of the Government of Puducherry dated, 06.10.2003, which provides the guidelines for issuance of domicile/residence/nativity certificate. As per the guidelines, for a student to claim domicile status, his parents or guardians must be residents of Puducherry for previous five years next before the date of application for obtaining the domicile certificate, or the student should have studied for five continuous previous years preceding the qualifying examination (this implies it must be 8th to 12th standard), and must have their residence (which implies he should not be a hosteller). What the authorities however, ignored was Clause (2) of the guidelines, which provide the parameters which the authority concerned may have to factor in while considering the application for obtaining the above referred certificates. This apart, the authorities have also equated domicile with the nativity, when both the expressions have different connotations.

3. Per contra, appearing for the respondents, the learned Additional Government Pleader (Puducehrry), submitted that while the petitioner claims that Abishek Charan did his schooling from class 1 to 10 in Puducherry, the boy himself has given a statement that he studied in different places both in Tamil Nadu and in Andhra Pradesh, and that he did his 9th and 10th standards alone in Puducherry.

4. This court weighed the rival submissions carefully. First, a distinction may have to be drawn between nativity and domicile. Nativity implies the place from which a person hail, or the place of his/her birth, whereas, domicile relates to residence-ship. So far as the petitioner is concerned, what is not in dispute is that he is a native of Puducherry, but what is in dispute is whether he is also a domicile of Puducherry. Therefore, without getting into further details, it can be straight away stated that petitioner's son Abishek Charan is entitled to a nativity certificate from the authorities.

5. Turning to the issue of domicile, paragraph 2(i) and 2(ii) of the guidelines issued vide order of the Government of Puducherry dated 06.10.2003 are relevant and they read as under:

"(i) While computing the period of actual residence, temporary absence for education, job etc. shall be ignored. In cases where the parents have gone abroad for the purpose of employment, then the residence of Grand parents in the U.T. of Pondicherry may also be taken for the issue of Residence Certificate for study purpose only to their Grand Children in exceptional an