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The Madras High Court has frowned upon the practice of district revenue officials not giving due weightage to community certificates issued in favour of blood relatives of an applicant, while considering the latter’s plea, despite several judicial pronouncements in favour of giving such weightage.
Justices R. Subramanian and K. Kumaresh Babu wrote: “We find this kind of malpractice recur particularly in matters relating to grant of community certificate. With a view to put an end to such illegal actions of District Collectors, we deem it fit to issue statutory notice in all these contempt petitions.”
The statutory notice requiring the presence of Tiruvannamalai Collector D. Baskara Pandian before the court on August 22 was issued on a batch of eight contempt of court petitions filed against him for having not issued Scheduled Tribe certificates to a group of applicants when he served as Tirupattur Collector.
The lead petitioner N. Uma’s counsel M. Radhakrishnan brought it to the notice of the court that her client had made an application in March 2019 seeking Kuruman (a Scheduled Tribe) certificate for herself and her three sons. She had enclosed a copy of her brother’s certificate to support her claim.
Her brother N. Madhavan had obtained the ST certificate in 2017 on the basis of the orders passed by the High Court in his writ petition in 2016. Nevertheless, the Tirupattur Sub Collector rejected her application in 2021 by stating that she belonged to Hindu Kurumbar (a Most Backward Class) community.
Immediately, she filed a writ petition challenging the Sub Collector’s order. The Bench led by Justice Subramanian dismissed the writ petition in 2022 along with seven other related petitions and granted liberty to the petitioners to file an appeal before the Collector against the Sub Collector’s orders.
The Bench also directed the Collector to dispose of the appeals within six months. Accordingly, Ms. Uma filed an appeal before the Collector on December 20, 2022 which ought to have been decided on or before June 22, 2023. But, it was only in October 2023, she received summons asking her to appear for an inquiry.
The petitioner wrote back to the Collector expressing her unwillingness to appear for a fresh inquiry and requested him to pass orders on the basis of her brother’s community certificate and other records. Since there was no response to the request, she had preferred the contempt petition along with seven others.
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