( 1 ) IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY APPELLATE SIDE, BENCH AT AURANGABAD WRIT PETITION NO. 1600 OF 2011 Balaji s/o Hullaji Mamilwar, Aged 22 years, Occupation Education, Resident of At Post Degloor, Taluka Degloor, District Nanded PETITIONER V E R S U S 1 The State of Maharashtra, Through Secretary to Tribal Development Department, Mantralaya, Mumbai RESPONDENTS 2 The Scheduled Tribe Caste Certificate Verification Committee Aurangabad, Through its Dy. Director (R), Aurangabad 3 The Sub Divisional Officer, Degloor, District Nanded Shri S.M. Vibhute, Advocate for the petitioner Shri N.R. Shaikh, AGP for respondent Nos.1 & 3 CORAM : D.B. BHOSALE & A.V. NIRGUDE,JJ. DATED : 9th March, 2011 ORAL JUDGMENT : (Per A.V. NIRGUDE, J. ) 1. Rule. Rule returnable forthwith. By consent of the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned AGP for respondents No. 1 and 3, the Writ Petition is taken for final hearing, and disposed of as follows : 2. The petitioner is challenging the order passed by the Sub Divisional Officer, Degloor, District Nanded, rejecting his application for issuance of Caste/tribe Certificate. The petitioner submitted an application to the Sub ( 2 ) Divisional Officer seeking issuance of a Caste/tribe Certificate mentioning therein that the petitioner belonged to “Mannerwarlu”, which is a Scheduled tribe. As said above, the On 4th March, 2009, the Sub Divisional Officer, rejected the application and refused to issue such Caste Certificate. The petitioner then approached respondent No. 2 the Caste Verification Committee, Aurangabad, on 12th March, 2009, by filing an appeal against the order passed by the Sub Divisional Officer dated 4th March, 2009, but the appeal also failed on 29th April, 2004. The petitioner then came to this Court in Writ Petition No. 5273 of 2009, where this Court vide its Judgment and order dated 13th August, 2009 set aside the orders mentioned above and remanded the case back to the Sub Divisional Officer, Degloor, directing him to consider the petitioner’s application in the light of the evidence, which he had brought on record and additional evidence, if produced. The petitioner then appeared before respondent No.3, the Sub Divisional Officer. He produced Caste/tribe Certificate issued in 1991 to his cousin showing his caste / tribe as “Mannerwarlu”. Similar certificate issued to his other cousin and even the tribe validity certificate issued in his cousin’s favour were also produced. He produced before the Sub Divisional Officer the genealogy to show how his cousins were related to him. Yet, the Sub Divisional Officer again rejected the petitioner’s application on 18th December, 2009. Again the petitioner moved an appeal before respondent No. 2 – Committee, on 24th December, 2009. The Committee again dismissed the appeal on 31st January, 2010. The petitioner again approached this Court through this writ petition seeking direction to respondent No. 2 - Sub Divisional Officer to issue required tribe certificate. 3. As mentioned above, the petitioner has produced on record prima ( 3 ) facie material that he belonged to “Mannerwarlu”, a scheduled tribe. In this background, the petitioner rightly placed reliance on several judgments of this Court, in which it was held that at the stage of issuance of caste/tribe certificate only prima facie material is required to be scrutinized, because even such caste/tribe certificate is required to be scrutinized at the stage of issuance of validity certificate. The Judgment in the case of Kum. Ankita Anup Rathor v. State of Maharashtra & Ors. (2009 (2) ALL MR 313) is applicable to the facts of this case too. In view of this, the writ petition deserves to be allowed. The rule is made absolute in following terms. i. The impugned order dated 18th December, 2009, passed by the Sub Divisional Officer as well as the order passed by the Scrutiny Committee dated 31st January, 2010 stand set aside. ii. Respondent No. 2 shall issue caste / tribe certificate to the petitioner in the prescribed form within a period of three weeks from today. Such certificate shall be subject to its validation by the Caste / Tribe Scrutiny Committee. iii. It is made clear that the observations made in this Judgment and order shall not influence the Scrutiny Committee at stage of caste/tribe validation. It would be open for the Scrutiny Committee to examine the case of the petitioner on its merits. iv. There shall be no order as to costs. ( A. V. NIRGUDE,J. ) ( D.B. BHOSALE,J. ) SRM/wp/1600/11/9/3/11/ok