NAGPUR (Maharashtra, India): In a significant ruling, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court has said that if part of a person’s place of original residence has gone to another state due to reorganization, that person cannot be considered a migrant and cannot be deprived of reservation benefits.
A bench of Justice Mukulika Jawalkar and Justice Nandesh Deshpande struck down the decision of the Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee as erroneous and against the law. The court said that states were reorganized on the basis of language, and not on the basis of any caste or tribe. If a group was recognized as a Scheduled Tribe in that region before such reorganization as well as the state formed after such reorganization, then such an individual cannot be deprived of reservation benefits merely on the ground that part of their original residence now falls in another state. In such a situation, the petitioner cannot be considered a migrant from another state, the court said.
The court quashed the decision of the scrutiny committee of 23rd February 2022, in which the validity of the Gond tribe certificate of the petitioner Vedant Mahendra Thakur had been rejected. The court also directed the authorities concerned to issue a validity certificate to Vedant Thakur within four weeks of receiving the order.
Vedant is a student of Maharashtra National Law University in Mumbai. In February 2022, while rejecting his scheduled tribe certificate, the scrutiny committee had said that his ancestors were not originally residents of Maharashtra. Therefore, he is a migrant and his claim cannot be accepted, the committee had said. Vedant later filed a petition to challenge this order.
The petitioner told the court that his ancestors were residents of Seoni district in Madhya Pradesh. Before 1950, Seoni district was part of the Central Provinces and Berar (C. P. and Berar) state and was under the Nagpur Division from the administrative point of view. When states were formed on linguistic basis in 1960, some parts of C. P. and Berar were included in Madhya Pradesh, while some parts were included in Maharashtra, he said. The petitioner said that the Gond community has Scheduled Tribe (ST) status in both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. To support his claim, the petitioner submitted his grandfather Roshan Singh Tej Singh’s school record from 1944, in which his caste is recorded as Raj Gond. He also submitted old school records of his father and uncle. His father’s caste is recorded as Gond.
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