HC tells Ulhasnagar SDO to pay 25,000 to petitioner for not fixing error on caste certificate

Hearing the plea, a division bench of Justices S C Dharmadhikari and Sandeep Shinde said this was a clear clerical error and government officials should have corrected it when someone had pointed it out. The court also observed that people had to approach the court for a clerical error.

Directing the SDO to pay Rs 25,000 to the petitioner, the bench also told the officer to issue a fresh caste certificate to the petitioner within four weeks.

Advocates Ramchandra Mendadkar and Tejashvini Bhamare, appearing for the Raisings, told the court that Ajay’s father had submitted an application before the SDO of Ulhasnagar to grant his a son a caste certificate belonging to Tokre Koli, a Scheduled Tribe. For the same, Bhojraj submitted various documentary evidence, including his certificate of validity issued by a competent caste scrutiny committee.

Mendadkar told the court that based on his father’s caste certificate, the SDO issued a caste certificate to Ajay on September 2007, certifying that he belongs to ‘Tokare Koli’ tribe. The spelling of the tribe mentioned in the caste certificate was ‘Tokare’, while, as per Presidential Notification, it is spelt ‘Tokre’.

The petition said that since submission of caste validity certificate for claiming reservation benefits is a precondition, he had moved the Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee seeking verification of his caste certificate well in time.

However, the committee, by its order on May 17, directed the petitioner to obtain a fresh caste certificate as the spelling of the tribe in the caste certificate was not according to the notification.

Bhojraj had then approached the SDO through an application, pointing out that there was a spelling error in the caste certificate. Mendadkar said the SDO did not issue a fresh certificate, but insisted to produce documentary evidence of prior to 1950 showing that the family of the petitioner were residents of Thane.

The petitioner informed the court that he has cleared HSC examination and also appeared for MH-CET 2019 examination. Since the admission process would commence soon, his seat, under the reserved category of Scheduled Tribe, would not be considered for want of caste validity certificate.