1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY, BENCH AT AURANGABAD. WRIT PETITION NO.3905 OF 2009 Laxman s/o Hiraman Parde ..PETITIONER VERSUS The State of Mah. & ors. ..RESPONDENTS Mr A.S. Londhe, Advocate for the petitioner; Mr S.K. Tambe, A.G.P. for respondents no.1 & 2; Mr U.S. Malte, Advocate for respondent no.3. CORAM : P.V. HARDAS AND S.V. GANGAPURWALA, JJ. DATE : 26th March, 2010 PER COURT : This petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India takes exception to an order passed by the respondent - Scrutiny Committee, dated 29.9.2008 invalidating the tribe claim of the petitioner as belonging to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe. 2. The certificate of the petitioner issued to him by the competent authority as belonging to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe came to be referred by the applicant to the Scrutiny Committee for verification. In support of his claim as belonging to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe the petitioner annexed several documents. The learned Counsel for the petitioner has urged before us that the document at sr.no.7 and the document at sr.no.23 in the list of the documents enlisted by the 2 Committee in its order are documents of some weight and having evidentiary value which would be germane for deciding the tribe claim of the petitioner. The document at sr.no.7 is a document relating to a validity certificate issued to one Bodamwad Sahebrao Manika. This certificate of validity pertains to the son of the son of paternal aunt of the petitioner. Obviously this validity certificate cannot be pressed into aid in support of the claim of the petitioner as belonging to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe. The other document on which reliance is placed by the petitioner is the document at sr.no.23. This document pertains to the school leaving certificate issued by the Head Master of Zilla Parishad, C.P. School, Tupa, Taluka and District Nanded to the real brother of the father of the petitioner. The name of the uncle of the petitioner is Bapurao Purbhaji Parde wherein the caste is recorded as "Mannerwarlu". 3. During the course of the inquiry conducted by the vigilance cell, the vigilance cell had examined the school leaving certificate issued to Gopinath Nagorao Parde, another uncle of the petitioner. The said Gopinath Nagorao Parde is also the real brother of the father of petitioner. Unfortunately, the original school record pertaining to Gopinath was not available in the school. The school leaving certificate came to be examined by the Scrutiny Committee and the Scrutiny Committee found that originally the word which was written in the school leaving certificate was "Munurwad". The last letter of word "wad" came to be over-written with the word "lu" to indicate the word as "Mannerwarlu". The vigilance cell, therefore, when confronted with the certificates wherein the different castes were recorded in respect of the two uncles of the petitioner found that the petitioner had not been able to establish by cogent and reliable evidence that the petitioner belongs to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe. 4. Learned Counsel for the petitioner has urged before us that the Scrutiny Committee was in error in accepting the report of the vigilance cell in respect of overwriting in the word "Mannerwarlu". According to the 3 learned Counsel for the petitioner since the original school record pertaining to Gopinath Nagorao Parde was not available, the Committee ought not to have placed reliance on this certificate and instead should have preferred the certificate pertaining to Bapurao Purbhaji Parde. The learned Counsel for the petitioner has further urged before us that in the college leaving certificate of Gopinath Nagorao Parde the caste which is recorded is "Mannerwarlu". Obviously, since the college leaving certificate had been issued on the basis of the school leaving certificate, the caste is bound to be recorded as "Mannerwarlu". However, the basic document i.e. the school leaving certificate of Gopinath Nagorao Parde clearly shows that the caste which was recorded was "Munnarwad" which was subsequently altered to " Mannerwarlu ". Since the certificate was in possession of Gopinath, none else could have done the alteration/over-writing. In any event, if the petitioner wanted to contend that the overwriting or the alteration was done by some one else, it was for the petitioner to have established. This is not an adversarial litigation, in that sense of the term, that the Committee is required to rebut and establish that the document is a tampered document. 5. Learned Counsel for the petitioner has placed reliance on the judgment of the Supreme Court in Sayanna vs. State of Maharashtra & ors., (2009) 10 Supreme Court Cases 268, particularly at paragraph 9 of the said judgment which reads thus :- "The report dated December 1, 2003, forwarded by the Police Inspector, Vigilance Cell, nowhere mentions that the certificate dated May 17, 1972, produced by the appellant to establish that he belongs to Mannerwarlu Scheduled Tribe is forged one. The contents of the certificate dated May 17, 1972 show that the said certificate was issued on the basis of the certificate issued by the President of Kundalwadi Municipality. The report dated December 1, 2003 of Police Inspector does not indicate whether the Police 4 Inspector had recorded the statement of the President of the Municipality to find out whether the certificate issued by the President was genuine or not. What is relevant to notice is that in the report dated December 1, 2003 the Police Inspector has merely stated as a matter of fact that the word "lu" was subsequently added while recording the caste of the appellant as Mannerwarlu in the school register. The Police Inspector has not stated that the word "lu" was interpolated by the appellant. There is every possibility that the word "lu" was not mentioned at the time of recording of the caste of the appellant and on being pointed out the correct spelling of caste, the word "lu" was added. Addition of word "lu" subsequently would not lead to an irresistible conclusion that the said word was added by the appellant or at his behest. It is difficult for this Court to understand as to on which basis the Scrutiny Committee came to the conclusion that the word "lu" was interpolated in the register of the school more particularly when it was not so opined by the Police Inspector who had conducted the enquiry. Whether interpolation by addition has taken place can be stated by a handwriting expert or by comparison of admitted letters of a person with this disputed one. It is an admitted position that the Scrutiny Committee had never attempted to get an expert's opinion nor itself had compared the disputed letters with admitted one of the appellant. Under the circumstances, the finding recorded by the Scrutiny Committee that the word "lu" was interpolated will have to be regarded as not based on any credible evidence. The Police Inspector had never taken care to find out whether the word "lu" was subsequently added by the school authorities or by the appellant. It was necessary for the said officer to undertake such an exercise in view of the specific defence of the appellant that the school record was lying with the school authorities and he had no opportunity whatsoever to tamper with the same." 5 6. We have reproduced the facts above to show that the facts in the reported judgment and the facts of the present case are entirely different. There the tampering of the school record was alleged as well as the certificate which had been issued by the President. In the present case, the tampering of the school leaving certificate which was in possession of Gopinath is alleged. The said certificate was obviously in possession of Gopinath and no one else could have done the tampering except Gopinath in order to derive advantage of belonging to Scheduled Tribe category. In any event, the Scrutiny Committee was confronted with two document, namely one document showing the caste of the uncle of the petitioner as "Mannerwarlu", while the other document showed the caste as "Munurwad" , which had been altered to "Mannerwarlu". In the face of such conflicting evidence/material, it could not have been held by the respondent - Scrutiny Committee that the petitioner had been successful in establishing that he belonged to "Mannerwarlu" - Scheduled Tribe. 7. We have examined the findings recorded by the Scrutiny Committee and upon such examination we do not notice any perversity in the reasoning of the Tribunal to warrant any interference in the extra- ordinary jurisdiction of this Court. According to us, no case is made out for interference and consequently this writ petition which sans merit is, therefore, summarily dismissed with no order as to costs. ( S. V. GANGAPURWALA, J.) ( P. V. HARDAS, J.) amj/wp3905.09