Cannot Expect Pre-1950 Documents To Mention "Thakur Scheduled Tribe": Bombay High Court Grants Tribe Validity Certificate To "Thakur" Applicant
The Bench held that pre-constitutional records hold highest probative value; caste scrutiny committee cannot reject tribe claims solely on affinity test results.
The Bombay High Court reversing an order of the Scrutiny Committee that invalidated the caste claim of a female applicant belonging to the 'Thakur' community, has held that requiring pre-1950 entries to explicitly mention "Scheduled Tribe" is a practical and legal impossibility since the Presidential Order notifying Scheduled Tribes was issued only in September 1950.
The Court noted that authentic pre-constitutional records carry the highest probative value in determining tribal status and cannot be discarded merely because an applicant fails the affinity test or because the exact words "Scheduled Tribe" are absent in pre-1950 documents. Accordingly, the Bench set aside the December 24, 2004 order of the Caste Scrutiny Committee, Amravati, and directed the authority to issue a Caste Validity Certificate to the petitioner within eight weeks.
A Division Bench comprising Justice M. S. Karnik and Justice Sandesh D. Patil observed, “The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 which was issued by a notification dated 6th September 1950, for the first time included the caste ‘Thakur’ in Entry 21 of the Tribal Community. There was, therefore, no occasion that the word ‘Thakur’ in ‘Thakur Schedule Tribe’ could be mentioned in the pre-constitutional document. In this premise, it is highly impossible that there would be mention of the word ‘Thakur Scheduled Tribe’ in any preconstitutional documents. The Court has also taken a view that unless until there is some document to show that the petitioner belongs to the upper caste, it would not be proper to reject the case of the petitioner because the word ‘Thakur Scheduled Tribe’ is not mentioned in the entry of caste. In absence of any material to show that the petitioner belongs to the upper caste ‘Thakur’, it would not be proper to reject the caste claim of the petitioner”.
Advocate R.K. Mendadkar appeared for the petitioner and V.R. Raje, Assistant Government Pleader appeared for the respondents.
The petitioner, Jyoti Tulshiramji Donge, had applied for verification of her Caste Certificate dated August 4, 1988, claiming membership of the 'Thakur' Scheduled Tribe. To substantiate her claim, she produced pre-constitutional official records, including a 1913 Kotwal Register entry of her great-grandfather, a 1944 extract of her grandfather, and a 1949 school entry of her father, all reflecting their caste as 'Thakur'.
However, the Scrutiny Committee invalidated her certificate, relying primarily on a Vigilance Cell report which concluded that the applicant failed to prove ethnic affinity with the tribal community.
The matter is a 22-year legal battle, where following the initial rejection, the petitioner approached the High Court, which remanded the matter back to the Scrutiny Committee in 1998. The Committee invalidated the claim again in 2002 on affinity grounds, leading to a second remand. In December 2004, the Committee invalidated the claim for a third time.
A subsequent writ petition was dismissed by a Division Bench in 2018, but the Supreme Court set aside that judgment following an appeal by the Maharashtra Adiwasi Thakur Jamat Swarakshan Samiti and remanded the individual petitions back to the High Court for fresh determination.
Examining the merits, the Court held that the Committee committed a serious jurisdictional error by disregarding genuine pre-constitutional records. Referring to Supreme Court precedents in Maharashtra Adiwasi Thakur Jamat Swarakshan Samiti and Anand v. Committee for Scrutiny & Ors. 2023 SCC OnLine SC 326, the Court affirmed that documents of the pre-constitution era hold the highest probative value as no reservations existed prior to 1950.
“Once there are documents which show that the caste of the petitioner's great-grandfather, grandfather, and petitioner's father is mentioned as ‘Thakur’, then those documents were having highest probative value and that only on the ground that affinity test was not applied, was no reason to discard the caste claim of the petitioner”, the Bench further noted.
Cause Title: Jyoti d/o Tulshiramji Donge v. Municipal Council, Jalgaon Jamod & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2026:BHC-AS:39140-FB)
Appearances:
Petitioner: R.K. Mendadkar, Priyanka Shaw, Advocates.
Respondents: V.R. Raje, Assistant Government Pleader.