Bombay High Court dismisses PIL seeking probe into fake caste certificates

The Bombay High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a direction to appoint a Committee headed by a retired High Court judge and assisted by a Special Investigation Team to investigate selection of candidates for reserved category jobs in the respondent by providing false and fabricated Caste Validity Certificates by persons migrating from other states.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that there are many persons who have sought employment with respondent  from reserved category though they were not entitled to the benefit of the reservation as those persons have migrated from the other States. 

The migrants do not have the right to seek employment in reserved category in Maharashtra. The same would be against the provisions of the Maharashtra Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, De-Notified Tribes (Vimukta Jatis) Nomadic Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Special Backward Category (Regulation of Issuance and Verification of) Caste Certificate Act, 2000, the counsel for the petitioner further argued.  

The Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice S. V. Gangapurwala and Justice Sandeep V. Marne did not find the necessary material and the substance to arrive at a conclusion that a particular candidate on the notified date was not the resident of Maharashtra.

‘The notified date would be relevant. The petitioner will have to prove that a particular candidate on the notified date was not the resident of State of Maharashtra and still he has been issued with the caste certificate and validity certificate. No such details or material is available on record. There are no material particulars on record in respect of the same,’ the Court observed.

On the basis of such scant pleadings, the PIL and more particularly a criminal PIL cannot be entertained. If the petitioner has relevant material, then the petitioner would be justified in agitating for the same, held the High Court.