Caste scrutiny committees cannot review past validity certificates, says HC

The Bombay High Court has struck down orders passed by scheduled tribe certificate scrutiny committees in Nashik and Pune, stating that the committees cannot review past orders on their own. The court said that the committees can only review orders pursuant to high court decisions. The court was hearing petitions challenging the cancellation of validity certificates issued to 14 individuals by the committees. The court ruled that the committees do not have the jurisdiction to reopen past decisions and invalidate caste validity certificates already granted.

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court recently struck down orders passed by the scheduled tribe certificate scrutiny committees in Nashik and Pune, which had cancelled validity certificates issued to 14 individuals’ years earlier, on grounds that a committee could not on its own review the past orders.

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A division bench of justice Girish Kulkarni and justice Jitendra Jain said the Supreme Court had in Madhuri Patil’s case, said that the caste scrutiny committees shall only be subject to the jurisdiction of high courts, and therefore, they can review earlier orders only pursuant to high court decisions.

“There cannot be a free hand or a licence to the caste scrutiny committees to reopen concluded cases of validity conferred by its earlier orders on a complaint or otherwise (suo motu) and review past orders,” the bench said in its order on Thursday.

The bench said the committees, being statutory bodies exercising quasi-judicial authority, do not have any jurisdiction to suo motu verify the past records and initiate action to reopen past decisions and invalidate the caste validity certificates already granted.

The court was hearing 14 petitions, seven of which challenged the order issued by the scheduled tribe certificate scrutiny committee in May last year in Nashik, cancelling the validity certificates issued to seven persons from the Koli Mahadev Scheduled Tribe.

The other seven petitioners had moved the high court after the ST committee for Pune district issued them notices for reviewing their tribe’s validity certificates.

The petitioners said that the scrutiny committees do not have the power to review their own orders under 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.

On the other hand, the committees and the state claimed that though there is no specific provision in the 2000 Act, the committees had inherent powers to review past orders.

The bench, however, rejected the argument and said if an inherent power of review is to be read in the provisions of the 2000 Act, it will lead to “a monumental uncertainty and absurdity,” as it could be done at the whims and fancies of the committees and will lead to patent arbitrariness, which happened in at least two of the cases before the bench – in which the orders cancelling validity came around 16 years after the certificates were issued.

In this backdrop, the court struck down the orders and notices issued by the scheduled tribes’ certificates scrutiny committees at Nashik and Pune and restored the original orders validating the petitioner’s tribe’s claims.