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Journalism of Courage
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Monday quashed and set aside the decision of the district caste certificate scrutiny committee, which invalidated the caste certificate of Congress leader Rashmi Barve, stating that the panel passed the order so that she could not contest the Lok Sabha elections.
The court also directed the Caste Scrutiny Committee (CSC) to pay a cost of Rs. 1 lakh to Barve within a week and expressed displeasure over its conduct. “We feel it our bounden duty to strongly deprecate the conduct of the CSC, who, instead of acting independently, dispassionately and within the four corners of the Caste Certificate Act, 2000 and the Rules framed thereunder, has conducted the enquiry, in a manner, which no Court of the land can accept, as it has merely acted as a lackey of the administration,” a division bench of Justices Avinash G Gharote and Mukilika S Jawalkar held. The order was made available on Tuesday.
The petitioner, through advocate S R Narnaware, claimed that the complaint before the committee filed by one Sunil Uttamrao Salve was ‘politically motivated’ and the panel had erred in passing its verdict. Her Nagpur Zilla parishad membership was also cancelled due to impugned decision.
In a strongly worded judgment, the bench opined that the petitioner made out a case that she belongs to the Scheduled Caste ‘Chambhar’ community. “The CSC appears to have gone on a witch hunt, being influenced by the letter of the Under-Secretary to the State and the complaints received by it, and instead of applying an independent mind, has danced to the tune of respondent Salve, who, once having failed in an earlier attempt in this regard, enlisted the help of the Under-Secretary to the State, to influence the CSC into discarding its earlier stand taken on his application, in conjunction with respondent officials…”
The bench noted that principles of natural justice to give reasonable opportunity to the petitioner to be heard were ‘thrown to the winds’ to “reject the caste claim of the petitioner, to ensure that she would not be a candidate in the parliamentary elections.”
The bench held the “impugned decision, which is a result of such shenanigans cannot be permitted to stand,” especially when the material found through independent probe of Vigilance Cell indicated that caste claim of petitioner was genuine.
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