HC dismisses caste validity petition, imposes Rs10K fine for suppression of facts
Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of
Bombay high court
dismissed a plea challenging the denial of a Scheduled Tribe (ST) validity certificate by a member of the 'Halbi' community. It held that the petitioner suppressed material facts regarding his blood relative's caste status and imposed a cost of Rs10,000 for misleading both the scrutiny committee and the judiciary.HC directed the petitioner, Murlidhar Khadge, to deposit the imposed cost with the High Court Legal Services Sub-Committee within four weeks.
A division bench of Justices Nitin Sambre and Vrushali Joshi ruled that Khadge, an employee of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, failed to disclose that his close relative, Gajanan Khadge, previously obtained a caste validity certificate belonging to the Special Backward Class (SBC) 'Koshti' caste. This certificate was issued in 2014, and the familial connection was reflected in a family tree submitted in 2018, which was not disputed.The petitioner cited a 1917 school record of his grandfather, Ukarda Kisanji, which identified Ukarda as 'Halbi', a recognised Scheduled Tribe. In an earlier writ petition in 2022, the court directed the scrutiny committee to verify this historical record through a Vigilance Cell and reconsider the petitioner's claim.However, after being pointed out by additional govt pleader Sangeeta Jachak, the court found that Khadge withheld the critical fact of his relative's SBC status both during the earlier litigation and in proceedings before the scrutiny committee.The court observed that if Khadge's claim were accepted, it would result in members of the same family holding caste validity certificates for two different groups — 'Halbi' (ST) and 'Khosti' (SBC) —without adequate justification. It ruled that there was no credible explanation from the petitioner for the omission and referred to prior Supreme Court and HC judgments emphasizing that fraud vitiates all proceedings.Additionally, the scrutiny committee's Vigilance Cell unearthed historical records from 1917 and beyond that documented the caste of other paternal relatives, including the petitioner's father, cousin, and great-grandfather, as 'Koshti'. The court concluded that the burden of disproving these adverse entries lay on the petitioner, who failed to do so convincingly.Citing the petitioner's deliberate suppression of facts and the legal consequences of misleading quasi-judicial bodies, the court refused to interfere with the scrutiny committee's April 2, 2025 order rejecting the tribe claim.
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