C O M M O N O R D E R

(Order of the Court was delivered by R.SUBRAMANIAN, J.)

Ms. R. Gayathri, the Revenue Divisional Officer, Dharmapuri, is present in person pursuant to our order dated 18.12.2024. Though an affidavit has been filed by her, tendering an apology, she has not chosen to disclose the name of the author of the counter affidavit signed by her dated 12.12.2024. Probably, she wants to safeguard the person who, according to her, rendered a helping hand to her.

2. Be that as it may, we make it very clear that in future affidavits or counter affidavits filed by the parties, particularly the Officers of the State Government, shall deal only with facts and facts alone. Legal submissions or extracts of judgements shall not be made part of an affidavit. If the Officers think that the Government Pleaders who are representing the State are incompetent and therefore, they should set out the judgments covering the issue in the affidavits filed by them, then it is open to them to remove them and have competent Law Officers, who will refer to the relevant judgments in their arguments before the Court. This Court has always held the view that the Government Pleaders are competent enough. The distrust on the part of the Government Officials is inexplicable.

3. This Court has been repeatedly pointing out that the legal submissions and extract of judgments shall not form part of the pleadings or the affidavits. We reiterate the said position. We direct the Registry to forward a copy of the counter affidavit dated 12.12.2024, along with a copy of this order, to the Chief Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu. We also direct the Chief Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu, to issue a necessary circular to all the Officers, requiring them to desist from referring to the legal submissions and judgments in the affidavits and pleadings filed by them before the Court. We also make it clear that any recurrence of such practice in future will be dealt with very seriously.

4. Coming to the case on hand, we find that the rejection of the petitioners' applications are mechanical. The petitioners had produced the Community Certificate of one K. Periyasamy, who is a paternal cousin, which has been verified by the State Level Scrutiny Committee and held to be genuine by its order dated 07.12.2023. The application of another paternal cousin of the petitioners and his son were held to be not genuine by the State Level Scrutiny Committee in its proceedings dated 25.07.2019 and the same was challenged before this Court in W.P. No. 23397 of 2019. A Division Bench of this Court, to which one of us (Justice R. Subramanian) was a party and by judgment dated 19.10.2022, set aside the order of the State Level Scrutiny Committee and upheld the certificate issued to them.

5. The Revenue Divisional Officer in the counter affidavit has chosen to state that the relationship certificate, which is relied upon to correlate the relationship, was found to be not genuine and she has stated that there is a possibility of the Uncle having married a woman belonging to a Scheduled Tribe and the Uncle's son having been favoured with the certificate on the basis of his mother's community. The State Level Scrutiny Committee's order upholding the Community Certificate of the paternal cousin of the petitioners has been uploaded by the petitioners along with their applications.

6. A perusal of the order very clearly says that they and their forefathers belonged to the Scheduled Tribe Community, viz., Kurumans. Therefore, the statement in the counter affidavit is an afterthought invented by the Revenue Divisional Officer to justify the rejection. Adverting to the procedure that has to be followed by the Revenue Divisional Officer, G.O. (Ms) No.104, Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare (CV-1) Department dated 21.08.2023, it sets out the procedure to be followed and the flowchart for issuance of certificate to a Scheduled Tribe person who claims to be a Scheduled Tribe is as follows:-

7. A Peru