The Madras High Court has come across a sordid case of a Southern Railway employee who got appointed under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) quota in November 1975 and even retired from service in March 2016, pending verification of his caste status by a State-level scrutiny committee after doubts were raised by his employer way back in 2000.
Dismissing a writ petition filed by the retired employee, A.R. Venkatachalam, a Bench of Justices R. Subbiah and C. Saravanan concluded that the petitioner had played fraud. “It is clear that the petitioner managed to continue in service by hoodwinking the authorities and by filing repeated legal proceedings without filing a copy of the community certificate.
“Even today, when the case was taken up for hearing, we asked about the community certificate. The learned counsel for the petitioner was, however, unable to give any explanation as to why the community certificate was not produced for verification. In fact, it is not clear on what basis the petitioner was allowed to be in service without production of community certificate,” the judges said.
Provisional pension
“Though serious doubts had arisen in 2000, it is even more surprising that the petitioner was allowed to be in service till the date of superannuation, and by a letter dated March 4, 2016, the petitioner was sanctioned provisional pension when indeed no community certificate had been sent for verification to the second respondent (State-level scrutiny committee).
“The second respondent has now filed collateral evidence to substantiate that the petitioner indeed belongs to another community which is not a Scheduled Tribe,” the judges observed and granted liberty to the petitioner to approach the committee once again if he was really in possession of a community certificate.
In 2000, an internal inquiry was initiated after receipt of complaints regarding the petitioner’s caste status. He failed to produce a community certificate. Later, it came to Southern Railway’s notice that the petitioner’s brother too had made a similar claim and that his community certificate got cancelled in 2007.
Meanwhile, the petitioner initiated multiple legal proceedings and the panel finally declared him as not a ST only on June 17 this year, and hence the present petition.
