Mumbai: The Bombay High Court recently quashed an order by a caste scrutiny committee that refused a caste validity certificate to a 20-year-old girl from the Mannervelu tribe, who wanted to pursue higher education. The court directed the State government to issue one to her immediately.
A Division Bench comprising Justices Shantanu Kemkar and G.S. Kulkarni was hearing a plea filed by Ankita Nimmalwar from Sindhudurg, challenging an order passed by the Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee, Konkan Division, Thane that rejected her claim that she belongs to a Scheduled Tribe.
In her plea, Ms. Nimmalwar said that by birth she belongs to the Mannervelu tribe, notified as a Scheduled Tribe under the Act of Parliament no.108 of 1976. The Deputy Collector of Sindhudurg granted her a caste certificate on April 7, 2007. As she wants to pursue higher education, she approached the caste scrutiny committee to validate her caste certificate. She said she had produced all relevant documents, including her father’s school leaving certificate, the caste certificate issued to her and caste validity certificates granted by the committee to her father, his sister, his brother and her uncle.
ADVERTISEMENT
In its order, the committee had referred to the caste validity certificates granted to family members, but rejected them saying the committee had not conducted an appropriate vigilance inquiry while granting them. It observed that the school leaving certificates recorded the tribe as ‘Manervarlu’, which isn’t the same as mentioned under law. The advocate appearing for her told the court that the reason given by the committee is unjustified, as there is no other tribe by that name.
The court said the committee has completely discarded vital documents submitted by family members that show they belong to the Mannervelu tribe. “We are certainly not impressed with the above reasonings of the Caste Scrutiny Committee and the approach of the committee in the present case is totally casual. to say the least. We are pained to note that there was no material before the Caste Security Committee which can lead to any inference that each of the vigilance enquiries in cases where the Caste Scrutiny Committee has granted caste validity certificate to her father, sister and uncle were in any manner flawed.”