RAVINDRA PRALHADRAO KHARE Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By an order passed on 13th Nov. 2017, we had remanded the claim of the petitioner to the Scrutiny Committee and directed the Scheduled Tribe Scrutiny Committee at Amravati to examine the claim of the petitioner since the petitioner hail from the said region and the Vigilance Enquiry in the earlier round was carried by the Vigilance Officer at Amravati. It is noted that the learned Advocate General appeared before us and we had invited his attention to the approach of the Scheduled Tribes Scrutiny Committees throughout the State, in dealing with the claim of Thakur Scheduled Tribe. We invited his attention to the numerous orders passed by various Scrutiny Committees confronted with the claim of candidates belonging to "Thakur" and the learned Advocate General assured this Court that the Scrutiny Committee to whom the matter is being remanded to, would examine the claim of the petitioner in the backdrop of the law as settled by the Honourable Apex Court and this Court, and will not be prejudiced by the observations made by the Committee in its earlier order. On this assurance, the petition was kept pending and the matter was relegated to the Scheduled Tribe Scrutiny Committee, Amravati Division, Amravati.

(2.) We are now confronted with an order dated 14th Dec. 2017 passed by the Scheduled Tribe Scrutiny Committee at Amravati, by which the claim of the petitioner as belonging to 'Thakur Scheduled Tribe' has again been invalidated and the certificate obtained by him from the Deputy Collector, Thane district dated 6th June 2007 has been cancelled.

(3.) Perusal of the impugned order would disclose that the Committee has framed some more issues apart from their usual three issues i.e. proof by way of documentary evidence - affinity test, Area restriction and now in the present decision, they have formulated four more issues. We are rather astonished with the approach of the Committee which has penned down 31 pages, reiterating its earlier view and we are very carefully using the word "reiterate" since after reading of the impugned order, what we have noted is only an attempt on the part of the Committee to further dissect our earlier orders and to find out a way to overcome the said orders. The Committee has, in the earlier round, taken into consideration the pre-constitutional documents on which the petitioner had placed reliance and this included the two documents i.e. the first page of service book of the petitioner's father Pralhad where the date of birth is recorded as 3rd April 1943 where the caste is recorded as 'Thakur'. Another document is the death extract in respect of the grand father of the petitioner Bhaurao Gangaram dated 27th Oct. 1947 and the third document is the extract of the School Admission Register of the uncle of the petitioner Dada Bhaurao Thakur dated 11th March 1935 and another extract of school admission register of Rambhau Bhaurao Khare, another uncle of the petitioner dated 9th April 1940 where the caste is recorded as Thakur. In the earlier round of litigation, the petitioner has relied upon the very same documents of his father and grand father of the year 1947 and 1948 respectively. The Committee has reasoned its finding in relation to the said documents by observing that the entry therein is only 'Thakur' and it is not clear whether that denote "Thakur Scheduled Tribe" or 'Thakur - Non Tribal Group'. In our earlier order dated 12th Oct. 2017, we have prima facie recorded that the said reasoning appear to be strange and in pre-constitutional documents there cannot be an entry of "Thakur Scheduled Tribe", as "Thakur" itself came to be recognized as Scheduled Tribe after the Constitution came into force and, therefore, in any pre-constitutional document, it would be difficult to find an entry "Thakur Scheduled Tribe". We had also observed that the Committee had held that the said documents cannot be treated as conclusive and therefore, it then fell back on the affinity issue. The observations of the Committee as regards the "wholesale fraud" played by the petitioner was also referred to by us in our order in the following paragraph :-