Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

8. From the perusal of the impugned order itself it reflects that the respondent No.2 upon taking cognizance of the complaint received by them in respect of the caste certificate of the petitioner, called upon the petitioner by issuing a notice and asking the petitioner to produce records to establish that she belonged to the Halba community itself. From the plain reading of the impugned order it further reflects that the petitioner did approach the respondent authorities and submitted the documents in respect of the caste status of her father, the documents which she had in her favour i.e. the caste certificate that was issued in her favour both on 27.03.1995 and another on 11.01.2000 certifying her to be belonging to the Halba community. Both of these documents were issued by the competent authorities of the State Govt.

9. A fact which needs to be further appreciated is that Halba was a notified Scheduled Tribe in the erstwhile State of C.P. Barar and also now in the State of Maharashtra as well. It is also a notified Scheduled Tribe in the State of Madhya Pradesh, so also in the State of Chhattisgarh also.

10. The Vigilance Cell of the respondent No.2 submitted its report to the respondent No.2, the High Powered Caste Scrutiny Committee, where the Vigilance Cell's conclusion is reflected in paragraph 7. Relying upon the said finding the Respondent No.2 held that the two caste certificates that were in possession of the petitioner issued on 27.03.1995 and 11.01.2000 declaring her of belonging to the Halba Scheduled Tribe community to be cancelled and thereafter directions were also issued to the respondent No.3 to take appropriate decisions in the light of the cancellation of the caste certificate.

14. To counter this, the counsel appearing for the State submitted that from the plain reading of the impugned order itself it would reveal that they were issued with notices and with periodical reminders to approach the respondent No.2 by producing strong and cogent documents to establish that they did belong to the Halba community. They were also granted sufficient opportunity and time to produce documents in respect of their proof of being residents of the State of Chhattisgarh of a period prior to 06.09.1950. When the petitioner failed to produce the relevant documents, the impugned order was passed drawing an adverse inference that the petitioner was not in a position to prove the fact with cogent proof of her belonging to the Halba community.

25. The impugned order also does not give slightest of an indication from the nature of enquiry that was conducted that the petitioner belonged to any other community, other than the Halba community for which the petitioner had a caste certificate. In the absence of any such verification or enquiry conducted by the Vigilance Cell and further in the absence of any such finding by the Committee that upon verification it was found that the petitioner belonged to any other community other than the Halba community, the impugned order is difficult to be sustained and the same seems to have been passed without meeting the requirement that was otherwise envisaged in the land mark decision of the Supreme Court in case of Kumari Madhuri Patil and Another Vs. Addl. Commissioner, Tribal Development and Others, 1994(6)SCC 241, wherein specific guidelines were issued by the Supreme Court as to the manner in which the Vigilance Cell is required to conduct the enquiry.