Some weeks ago, the Allahabad High Court issued a different kind of showcause notice to Shankhlal Majhi, the sitting Samajwadi Party MP from Akbarpur. He was asked to verify his “scheduled caste identity”. A few months earlier, the veracity of the “scheduled caste identity” of Munshi Pal, another MP from the same state, was questioned by the National Commission on Scheduled Castes (‘Panel to probe MP “posing” as Dalit for elections’,IE, July 21).Whether it is the case of Majhi or Pal, or even the recent conviction of Sanjay Bhatia, an IPS officer from Haryana, for filing a “fraudulent caste certificate”, it is clear to any impartial observer that the phenomenon of false caste certificates has reached menacing proportions.The gravity of the situation as it exists today can be gauged from the recent investigations conducted by the CBI into the status of employees working in different ministries and departments of the Central and state governments, as well as in public sector undertakings. The findings were interesting, to say the least. In the case of the Delhi government, about 30 per cent of employees who had got jobs in the reserved category, seem to have done so by having submitted false certificates.While one is aware of the fact that many seats reserved for the socially oppressed sections of society remain unfilled, the phenomenon of those being filled with phoney Dalits or phoney tribal candidates has rarely received the attention it deserves.The “widespread incidence” of false certificates prompted the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (since separated) to carry out pilot studies in several states. The Third Report of the ‘National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’ (’94-’95 and ’95-’96) tells us about the outcome of the process. A random check of 12 Central government organisations in Tamil Nadu found 338 holders of fraudulent ST certificates. The Commission was successful in dismissing only six of them after enormous delays. In fact, nearly a quarter of the individuals thwarted their removal by getting stay orders from cooperative local courts. It needs to be noted that since the policy of reservations is based on executive instructions, officials found to be violating them do not invite penal provisions.Our bureaucrats, given their strongly elitist orientation, are constantly devising ways to bypass the proper implementation of reservations. But it is high time that every effort is made to overhaul the reservations system and give it a much needed administrative face-lift. This would include curbing abuse, and revising and streamlining procedures. As suggested by various commissions over the years, we need a comprehensive act which would articulate the policy and which can then be included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, so that unnecessary intervention by the courts is limited.
