The Bombay High Court (Aurangabad Bench) has overturned the refusal by the Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee to validate the ‘Tokre Koli’ Scheduled Tribe Certificate of the petitioner and the direction for its confiscation and cancellation. The Court also asserted that the Committee should not have refused such a claim on the ground that pre-Constitutional entries are ‘Dhor Koli’ and post-Constitutional entries are of ‘Tokre Koli’.
Therefore, the Court granted the benefit of Entry No. 28 to the petitioner, and ruled that the affinity test is not a litmus test to decide the caste claim and is not an essential part in the process of determining of correctness of a caste or tribe claim in every case.
Accordingly, while allowing the petition, the Court reiterated that when the affinity test is conducted by the Vigilance Cell, the result of the test, along with all other material on record having probative value, will have to be taken into consideration by the Scrutiny Committee for deciding the caste validity claim.
The brief background pertained to the pre-constitutional entries in the school admission register and the birth and death registers describing the petitioner’s forefathers as ‘Dhor Koli’, ‘Koli Dhor’ and ‘Tokre Koli’, which was resorted to by the petitioner to claim validation under the category of Scheduled Tribe. The Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee, however, discarded these entries based on a recommendation in the vigilance report.
The Division Bench comprising Justice Nitin B. Suryawanshi and Justice Vishali Patil observed that the entry ‘Dhor Koli’ or ‘Tokre Koli’, is recorded at one and the same serial number in the Constitution of India, the Scheduled Tribe Order. Once the pre- and post-Independence era documents, in relation to the blood relation of the petitioner, reflect the tribe entry of ‘Koli Dhor’ and ‘Tokre Koli’, it has to be inferred that the petitioner has discharged the burden of proof.
The Bench found that the pre-constitutional entries from the school admission register and the birth and death register of the petitioner’s cousin grandfather, paternal aunt of father, great-grandfather were Koli Dhor, the record of her father’s aunt of 1952 is Hindu Tokre Koli, but the Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee has discarded this evidence only based on Vigilance Committee report, which mentioned interpolation, and the Committee has not doubted the genuineness of the post-Independence Tokre Koli entries.
The Bench discarded the allegation of different handwriting and ink, to observe that such an act cannot be interpreted as ‘interpolation’ and explained that different persons holding the charge of a post in public office authored the entries at different times.
The Bench said that the Committee should be sensitive to the provisions of Section 73 of the Indian Evidence Act and corresponding Section 72 of Bhartiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, as per which, the Quasi-Judicial bodies, like the Committee, can compare the handwriting to reach at a proper conclusion. However, in this case, the Committee has neither taken any expert’s opinion on the issue, nor thought it fit to even record the statement of any of the public servants who have authored the record or allegedly tampered with the record.
While emphasising that the pre-constitutional record would carry greater probative value as compared to the later period, the Bench clarified that merely because the Vigilance Cell has given an opinion that by itself won’t bind the Committee to reach to a conclusion.
Appearances:
Advocate Mohanish V. Thorat, for the Petitioner
AGP N. B. Kamble and Advocate M.D. Narwadkar, for the Respondent
