Bombay High Court
Twarita Sandeep Kachare Minor U/G Pet. ... vs The State Of Maharashtra Through Its ... on 2 February, 2026
Author: Vibha Kankanwadi
Bench: Vibha Kankanwadi
2026:BHC-AUG:7179-DB
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY
BENCH AT AURANGABAD
WRIT PETITION NO. 15528 OF 2025
1. X.Y.Z.
Age: 12 years, Occu.: Eduction
(minor under guardianship of
petitioner No.2)
2. A.B.C.
Age: 37 years, Occu.: Housewife
Both R/o. C/o. Praphulabai Babasaheb Kadan,
Ramabai Colony Khandeshwari Road, Beed,
Tq. & Dist. Beed. ... Petitioners
Versus
1. The State of Maharashtra
Through its Secretary,
Education Department, Mantralaya,
Fort, Mumbai.
2. The Education Officer,
Higher Secondary, Zilla Parishad,
Beed.
3. The Education Officer (Primary)
Zilla Parishad, Beed.
4. The Head Master,
Kankaleshwar Vidyalaya
In front Akashwani Kendra,
Khadkeshwar Road, Beed,
Tq. & Dist. Beed. ... Respondents
......
Advocate for Petitioner : Sanghmitra Wadmare,
AGP for Respondents Nos.1 and 2 : Mr. V.M. Kagne
......
CORAM : SMT. VIBHA KANKANWADI AND
HITEN S. VENEGAVKAR, JJ.
DATED : 02 FEBRUARY, 2026
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JUDGMENT [Per Hiten S. Venegavkar, J.] :-
1. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith. With the consent of
learned counsel for both the sides, taken up for final hearing at
admission stage.
2. This petition under Articles 226 and 227 raises, at first blush,
what appears to be a routine prayer for correction of a minor student's
name in school records. But it also carries a second prayer of far greater
constitutional and human significance; the correction of the caste entry
of the minor child from "Maratha" to "Scheduled Caste - Mahar" in the
school record maintained by Respondent No.4 and supervised by
Respondent Nos.2 and 3. In our view, the facts of the case, and the
constitutional values that must govern State action when the identity,
dignity and future of a child are at stake, compel relief to be granted.
3. Petitioner No.1 is a girl child aged about 12 years, studying in
6th Standard in the school of Respondent No.4. Petitioner No.2 is her
single mother and natural guardian. The record placed before us shows
that the biological father of Petitioner No.1 is the accused in a criminal
case arising out of a sexual offence against Petitioner No.2, and that a
DNA report during investigation confirmed paternity. The accused's
name came to be reflected as"father" in the birth certificate and
thereafter entered in permeated school and allied documentation.
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4. A settlement/compromise is stated to have taken place between
petitioner No.2 and accused-father on 14 December 2022 whereby the
permanent custody of Petitioner No.1 remained with Petitioner No.2
and the accused was to have no role as natural guardian in future.
Consequent thereto, Petitioner No.2 caused a Gazette notification for
change of name of Petitioner No.1. On 9 April 2025, Petitioner No.2
moved Respondent No.4 seeking correction of the minor's name and
caste entry in school records. Respondent No.4 forwarded the request to
the Education Officer (Secondary). By communication dated 2 June
2025, the proposal was rejected on the ground that the Secondary
School Code/School Code of Conduct does not permit such corrections.
From these pleadings, the issues that arise are: (i) whether the
authorities were justified in refusing to correct the minor's name in the
school record; (ii) whether they were justified in refusing to correct the
caste entry from "Maratha" to "Scheduled Caste - Mahar"; and (iii)
what directions, consistent with statutory safeguards against misuse,
must issue so that the minor's identity is protected without undermining
the integrity of caste certification regimes.
5. Petitioner No.1 is about twelve years of age. Petitioner No.2 is
her mother and, as the petition pleads and the record indicates, her
only parent. The pleadings disclose that, at the stage of birth and early
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documentation, the father's name came to be entered in the birth
certificate and thereafter was carried into school records. Subsequent
events, however, fundamentally altered the position: Petitioner No.2 has
exclusive custody, shoulders full responsibility for upbringing, education
and maintenance, and the father is not part of the child's life in any
legal or functional sense. The petitioners assert, and it is not
meaningfully rebutted, that continuation of the father's name and
surname in the school record does not merely create an inaccuracy; it
creates an avoidable social vulnerability for a child who must grow up,
learn, and form her identity in society that often treat names as identity
for family history. The relief is therefore not a matter of preference, but
of ensuring that official records do not become instruments of
compulsory and stigmatic attachment.
6. The respondents rejected the petitioners' representation by
placing reliance upon the Secondary School Code and by asserting that
such correction is not permissible. This stand cannot be accepted as a
blanket proposition. Administrative registers exist to record facts in aid
of welfare and governance; they are not meant to fossilise identity
irrespective of changed circumstances, nor are they meant to compel
the continuation of an entry merely because the form once required it.
In Maharashtra, the State itself has, in recent years, moved decisively
towards institutional recognition of the mother's identity as an essential
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component of identity in government documentation. The Government
Resolution dated 14 March 2024 records a policy rationale rooted in
equality and dignity, and mandates that in government records,
including school and educational documents, the mother's name be
mandatorily included, with implementation from 1 May 2024. This is
not an isolated policy flourish; it reflects the Government's recognition
that mother-centric identity entries are not contrary to law, but are an
affirmation of constitutional values in administrative practice. More
importantly for our purposes, the said Government Resolution itself
refers to earlier decisions of the School Education Department that
require mother's name to be entered in school records and reflected in
school leaving documentation, and it acknowledges that where custody
is granted to the mother (for example, upon divorce), the mother may
request that the child's name be recorded by placing the mother's name
in place of the father's name, subject to prescribed conditions. When the
State has itself accepted, as a matter of policy, that the mother's name is
central to identity documentation and that paternal identifiers are not
immutable where custody and welfare so require, it is difficult to
comprehend how a subordinate authority may take refuge in a
sweeping "no power" position and deny consideration to a request that
is otherwise supported by documents and grounded in the welfare of a
child.
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7. The constitutional position admits of no ambiguity. Article 21
protects not merely existence, but life with dignity; and dignity includes
the right to an identity that is not forcibly tethered to an absent parent
where such tethering serves no welfare purpose and causes avoidable
social harm. A school record is not a private note; it is a public
document that follows a child across years, institutions, and sometimes
into the professional domain. A child raised exclusively by her mother
cannot be compelled to carry, as the State's chosen description of her,
the father's name and surname merely because the format once
demanded it. If the lived guardianship is maternal, the record cannot
insist on paternal visibility as a matter of routine, and then call it
administrative neutrality.
8. Article 14 of Constitution of India requires substantive equality.
The assumption that identity must flow through the father is not a
neutral administrative default; it is a social presumption inherited from
a patriarchal structure that treated lineage as male property and women
as appendages for purposes of public identity. To insist on this
presumption in contemporary India, especially in cases of single
motherhood and exclusive maternal custody, imposes a structural
burden upon women and their children. It makes the mother fully
visible for responsibility and accountability, but insufficiently visible for
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purposes of identity. Such an asymmetry violates the equality principle,
because it makes constitutional citizenship contingent upon a male
conduit even when the male conduit is absent, severed, or irrelevant to
welfare.
9. Article 15's promise of non-discrimination and Article 15(3)'s
permission to protect women and children reinforce this. An
administration that insists the father's name is indispensable but the
mother's name is optional does not merely follow a "custom"; it
reproduces inequality through documentation. The Directive Principles
under Article 39(f) and Article 46, requires protection of children and
advancement of Scheduled Castes, which further illuminate the State's
duty to ensure that educational records do not become documents of
stigma or injury. The question is not whether the State can
accommodate the mother's identity; it is whether the State can refuse to
do so when refusal harms the child and is justified only by bureaucratic
habit. The Constitution requires the State to evolve.
10. The Full Bench of this Court in Janabai d/o Himmatrao Thakur
v. State of Maharashtra, AIR OnLine 2019 Bombay 1055, has
authoritatively construed Clauses 26.3 and 26.4 of the Secondary
School Code and the Full Bench holds, inter alia, that an application for
change in spelling of name, or "for that matter in the name, surname or
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caste" are errors that fall within "obvious mistakes" and can be acted
upon even after a student has left school, and that correction in the
leaving certificate may be made to bring it in consonance with the
General Register entries. The proposition that the school authorities
cannot take a blanket position that "no correction is permissible" is
therefore plainly untenable in law.
11. In the present case, the refusal is founded on precisely such a
blanket proposition. It disregards the Full Bench exposition. Once a
Gazette notification and supporting material is produced, and once the
competent authority's permission contemplated by the Code is
approached in the manner prescribed, the request must be considered
on its merits within the framework laid down by the Full Bench.
Accordingly, to the extent the petition seeks correction of name, the
petitioners are entitled to relief. We have no hesitation in holding that
the impugned communication dated 2 June 2025 cannot stand to the
extent it rejects the name correction request on the ground of non-
permissibility. Once the petitioners submits the Gazette notification and
supporting material, and once the competent authority under the Code
is moved in the prescribed manner, the request must be considered on
merits. A correction that substitutes the mother's name and surname in
place of the father's name and surname, when the mother is the sole
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guardian and caregiver, does not subvert any public purpose but it
advances accuracy, protects the child's welfare, and aligns with the
State's own policy direction that mother's name is mandatory in
government documentation.
12. We now turn to the more difficult question, correction of caste
entry of Petitioner No.1. Here, the State urges that the Code does not
permit any alteration and that caste must ordinarily follow the father; it
is further submitted that the petitioners must first obtain a caste
certificate for Petitioner No.1 and only thereafter any correction can be
contemplated. We agree with the State only to the limited extent that
caste entries cannot be altered casually, and that a school is not itself a
caste-adjudicating body. But we emphatically do not agree that the State
may, by a rigid and patriarchal default rule, compel a child who is and
will be raised solely by her Scheduled Caste mother, and permanently
severed from the father; (a) to carry the caste identity of the father in
school records, and (b) to suffer the lifelong consequences of that
imposed identity, particularly when the record itself discloses the
father's role as an accused in a grave offence.
13. In Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika v. State of Gujarat , (2012) 3 SCC
400 the Supreme Court explained that in inter-caste situations there
may be a presumption that a child takes the father's caste, but that the
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presumption is not conclusive, and the matter is ultimately one of fact
depending upon upbringing and the social milieu in which the child is
reared. This understanding has also been reiterated in official guidance
noting that the presumption is not conclusive and that proper scrutiny
must be undertaken. The jurisprudence thus rejects caste determination
as a mechanical exercise and requires attention to lived social reality.
14. A Division Bench of this Court at Nagpur, in Ku. Noopur d/o
Prashant Ambre v. Scheduled Tribe Caste Certificate Scrutiny
Committee 2020 (1) MhLJ 884, dealing with a "distressed family led by
single mother", held that the case required a different approach and
drew support from the law laid down in Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika,
observing that it is permissible for a candidate to claim the caste/tribe
of one parent in appropriate circumstances, and that the authority must
test genuineness on documents rather than insist inflexibly upon
paternal records when the factual context demands otherwise.
15. Equally instructive is the decision of this Court in Sonal
Pratapsingh Vahanwala v. Deputy District Collector (Encroachment) &
Ors., (2022) SCC OnLine Bom 628, where the Court recognized that
when a child is brought into the legal and social fold of a single mother
(there by adoption), insistence on biological father's caste
documentation, when unavailable, defeats both law and justice; the
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Court noted the undisputed position of the single mother and treated
the child as entitled to take the mother's caste, relying inter alia on the
Supreme Court's approach in Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika (supra).
16. Most recently, the Hon'ble Supreme Court, while disposing of
Special Leave Petition (Civil)__ Diary No(s). 52656/2025 in The
Tahsildar and Others v. S. Sivapriya (decided on 08.12.2025), passed
the following order:
"1. Delay condoned.
2. For the reasons mentioned in the application
(IANo.306663/2025), the same is allowed. Cause title
be amended accordingly.
3. We have heard learned Attorney General for India in
support of the prayer made in this special leave petition.
4. We are of the considered view that the direction issued
by the High Court, in the peculiar facts and
circumstances of this case, for issuance of Scheduled
Caste Community Certificate in favour of the minor
child of the respondent, does not warrant any
interference of this Court. Moreover, having taken notice
of the urgency of such certificate for the daughter of the
respondent, we are informed that the Authorities have
graciously complied with the directions and the
requisite certificate has been issued.
5. We are, thus, of the opinion that irrespective of
pendency of the larger issue before this Court, there is
no necessity to entertain the instant special leave
petition and jeopardize the admission granted to the
minor girl child.
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6. Consequently, the Special Leave Petition is dismissed.
However, the question of law is kept open.
7. It is clarified that the impugned order will not be taken
as a precedent for other matters, which shall be decided
as per their own merits.
8. All pending applications, if any, also stand disposed of."
Thus, an education-protective posture, declined to interfere with
an order permitting a minor girl from Puducherry to obtain an SC
certificate on the basis of the mother's Adi Dravida identity, noting that
a child's education ought not to be held up while larger questions are
examined, and observing that "changing times" may warrant such
recognition, though the broader question was left open. While this does
not finally settle all doctrinal contours, it unmistakably signals judicial
sensitivity to the realities of children raised by mothers belonging to
reserved communities, and the danger of foreclosing substantive
equality by rigid lineage formulas.
17. The social dimension is not an ornament to the legal reasoning;
it is the very context in which constitutional rights operate. In India,
name and caste entries in school records can shape social perception,
peer conduct, access to entitlements, and the child's own psychological
sense of belonging. If the child is raised entirely within the mother's
household and community, and will have no functional ties to the
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father's community, insisting that she carry the father's caste entry may
expose her to rejection from that community while simultaneously
creating confusion and vulnerability in the milieu where she actually
lives. The Constitution's promise is not that the State will preserve old
social assumptions; it is that the State will protect dignity and equal
citizenship, particularly for children, who cannot be made to bear the
consequences of adult conduct or social prejudice.
18. The constitutional frame is decisive. Article 14 of Constitution of
India does not permit the State to apply a rule that is facially "neutral"
but substantively oppressive in its operation. A practice that treats
paternal identity as the singular conduit of caste, regardless of custody,
upbringing, abandonment, violence, or social acceptance, entrenches
structural inequality and denies equal protection. Under the
Constitution of India, Article 15(1) forbids discrimination on grounds
of caste and sex; Article 15(3) permits special protection for women and
children; and Article 15(4) embodies the constitutional project of social
justice for historically oppressed communities. Article 21 of Constitution
of India protects dignity as a non-derogable core; for a child, dignity
includes the right to an identity not forged by coercion and not imposed
to perpetuate stigma. Directive Principles in Constitution particularly
Article 39(f) and Article 46 requires the State to protect children from
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moral and material abandonment and to promote the educational and
economic interests of Scheduled Castes. These are not rhetorical
flourishes; they are interpretive compasses. When State authorities
wield subordinate "codes of conduct" to deny a minor child relief that
directly touches her dignity and future, constitutional adjudication must
intervene.
19. The social context cannot be sterilized away. In India, a child's
name and caste entry in school records are not mere clerical fields; they
shape social perception, peer treatment, access to entitlements, and,
crucially, the child's own sense of belonging. Here, the petitioners assert
without any meaningful rebuttal that Petitioner No.1 will have no
relationship with the biological father henceforth, and that the Maratha
community would never accept her as one of them given the total
absence of ties and socialization, whereas she is being raised exclusively
within the Mahar Scheduled Caste milieu of her mother. It is precisely
this lived reality that constitutional courts have insisted must be
examined rather than substituted by presumptions.
20. The entry in respect of the father's name and caste in the school
record of the minor at the time of her admission was made on the basis
of the particulars then furnished and cannot be faulted in the context of
the circumstances prevailing at that stage. However, the subsequent and
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undisputed developments materially altered the legal and factual
position. The accused-father committed rape resulting in the birth of
the child and, under the recorded settlement, unequivocally declared
that he would have no relationship, responsibility or role in the
upbringing of the minor. The mother has since been the sole person
managing and raising the child. The minor, now aged about twelve
years, has grown up exclusively in the social environment of the mother
and within her caste community.
21. In these circumstances, the continued reflection of the father's
caste in the school records does not correspond to the minor's lived
social identity or her legally recognized guardianship. What may have
been a correct entry at the inception has, by reason of subsequent and
undisputed events, become factually incongruent and legally untenable.
The expression "Obvious Mistake", as explained by the Full Bench in
Janabai (supra), is not confined to clerical or typographical errors
alone; it extends to entries which, on the face of unimpeachable
material, are demonstrably inconsistent with the true and legally
established position. Where the record perpetuates a status that no
longer exists in law, or in fact, its correction cannot be denied on a
narrow construction of the term.
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22. The determination of caste, particularly in atypical or
exceptional factual settings, cannot be restricted to a matter of
biological descent alone. The Hon'ble Supreme Court, in Rameshbhai
Naika (supra), has emphasized the relevance of social upbringing and
the environment in which child is reared. In the present case, the minor
has been raised solely by the mother, who belongs to the Scheduled
Castes community, and there is no material on record to suggest that
the child has been brought up in an environment deriving her social
identity from the father's caste. The father's express renunciation of
relationship and responsibility further removes any foundation for the
continuation of the existing entry.
23. The paramount consideration remains the welfare and best
interest of the child. To compel the minor to carry, in her educational
records, the caste identity of a person who has completely disconnected
himself from her would be contrary to social reality and fairness. The
correction sought does not amount to a voluntary alteration of caste by
agreement, but rather to a rectification of the record so that it reflects
the true social and legal position in the peculiar facts of the present
case. Therefore, correction of the caste entry in the school record on the
basis of the mother's caste falls within the permissible scope of
rectification of an obvious mistake and warrants interference.
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24. We would be failing in our constitutional role if we did not state,
plainly, what is at stake. Recognition of a single mother as a complete
parent for purposes of a child's civic identity is not an act of charity; it is
constitutional fidelity. It reflects the movement from patriarchal
compulsion to constitutional choice, from lineage as fate to dignity as
right. A society that claims to be developing cannot insist that a child's
public identity must be anchored to a father who is absent from the
child's life, while the mother, who bears the entire burden of
upbringing, remains administratively secondary. The State's formats
must not become moral judgments; they must become accurate
instruments of welfare.
25. Having said this, we are conscious of two legitimate concerns:
(i) caste certificates are susceptible to misuse, and (ii) schools should
not become substitute caste verification authorities. Therefore, relief
must be structured in a manner that protects the child while preserving
the statutory scheme for issuance and verification of caste certificates.
The Nagpur Bench in Noopur Ambre (supra) also makes an important
institutional point that the issuing authority under the caste law must
not usurp the scrutiny committee's role, and must confine itself to
issuance based on requisite documents, leaving verification to the
proper forum. That division of roles must be respected here as well.
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26. We therefore hold as follows. (a) So far as the correction of
name is concerned, the rejection order dated 2 June 2025 cannot stand
in view of the Full Bench law in Janabai (supra) which recognizes
correction of name/surname/caste as falling within "obvious mistakes"
framework and requires the competent authority to consider such
requests rather than reject them by a blanket prohibition. (b) So far as
caste is concerned, where a minor child is in the exclusive custody of
the Scheduled Caste mother, has been raised in her social milieu, and
the father is not in the picture & more so where continuation of
paternal identity in records risks stigma, the State cannot refuse even to
consider correction by mechanically invoking the Secondary School
Code. The correct approach is, the child's caste claim on the mother's
side must be entered in school records of petitioner No.1 and thereafter
caste certificate process be taken up by petitioner No.2-mother for
petitioner No.1-minor girl & the said claim be then processed by the
competent authority under the caste certification framework, applying
the Supreme Court's fact-sensitive approach in Rameshbhai Dabhai
Naika (surpa) and this Court's approach in Noopur Ambre and Sonal
Vahanwala (supra).
27. Before we part, we must underscore the larger social message.
Recognition of a single mother as the full source of a child's civic
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identity name including lineage descriptor, and caste, where the facts
warrant does not dilute the society but on the contrary it civilizes it. It
marks a movement from patriarchal compulsion to constitutional choice
and from lineage as fate to dignity as right. When the law acknowledges
that a mother can be the sole and complete parent in every meaningful
sense, it does not merely do justice between litigants/parties but it
affirms the Constitution's promise that individuals, especially children,
are not to be punished for the circumstances of their birth and wrong of
their parents. Hence, we proceed to pass the following order:
ORDER
28. The Writ Petition is allowed in the following terms:
(i) The communication/order dated 02.06.2025 issued by Respondent No.3 rejecting the petitioners' proposal for change in the name, surname, and caste in the school record of petitioner No.1 is quashed and set aside.
(ii) Name correction: Respondent No.4 (Headmaster) shall, upon verification of the Gazette notification and supporting documents produced by Petitioner No.2, forward a fresh proposal for correction of Petitioner No.1's name in the General Register and all consequential school records. Upon receiving the said proposal, Respondent No. 2 (Education Officer) shall carry out the corrections in the middle name and surname of Petitioner No. 1 by substituting the name and surname of the father of Petitioner No. 1, in 15528-28-WP.odt {20} accordance with the law laid down in the case of Janabai (supra) and in terms of the observations made in the present judgment.
(iii) Caste correction / enabling direction: Respondent No.4 (Headmaster) shall enter the caste of Petitioner No.2 (mother of Petitioner No.1) in the school records of Petitioner No.1 (minor daughter of Petitioner No.2) as "Scheduled Caste - Mahar" in place of the caste of Petitioner No.1's father "Maratha". Petitioner No.2 is permitted to apply for issuance of a caste certificate for Petitioner No.1 on the basis of her own caste status as "Scheduled Caste - Mahar" with supported of the documents of her and her maternal family. The competent authority shall consider such application for caste claim of Petitioner No.1 expeditiously by applying the fact-sensitive approach mandated by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika (supra) and the approach of this Court in Noopur Ambre (supra) and Sonal Vahanwala (supra), without insisting inflexibly upon paternal records where the facts demonstrate exclusive maternal upbringing and severance of paternal ties.
(iv) After receiving the caste certificate from the competent authority, Petitioner No.2 shall produce such caste certificate of Petitioner No.1 to the office of Respondents No.3 and 4, who will then take the copy of the said certificate on the school record and issue all consequential corrected documents with the corrected 15528-28-WP.odt {21} name, surname, and caste of Petitioner No.1 to Petitioner No.2, if required.
(v) While carrying out the above, the respondents No.3 and 4 shall ensure that the minor child is not subjected to avoidable disclosure, stigma, or harassment within the school environment.
29. Rule is made absolute in the above terms. No order as to costs.
[ HITEN S. VENEGAVKAR ] [ SMT. VIBHA KANKANWADI ]
JUDGE JUDGE
S P Rane