Tag: caste certificate

Put ‘on Hold’ by 22 Schools, TN Couple Secure ‘No Caste, No Religion’ Certificate for Child

The couple had applied to many schools to gauge the depth of the problem. None would accept that the ‘caste’ and ‘religion’ columns had been left blank.

New Delhi: A Tamil Nadu couple has secured a certificate for their three-year-old daughter that declares that she has no religion or caste – a decision spurred by local schools’ insistence on specifying both.

Coimbatore businessman Naresh Karthik and his wife Gayathri applied to 22 primary schools for their daughter Vilma. In every one of them, her application was put “on hold” because the ‘caste’ and ‘religion’ categories were left blank, Naresh told The News Minute.

None of the schools were aware of the fact that the Tamil Nadu government had passed an order in 1973 and 2000 that allowed religion and caste categories to be left blank.

He said that even though the couple had decided where their daughter would enrol, they undertook this application exercise just to gauge the depth of the problem.

Tamil Nadu schools have history in perpetuating caste divisions. In 2019, the state’s Director of School Education attempted to crack down on schools where children were made to wear wrist bands of various colours to identify their caste. However, the then education minister  K.A. Sengottaiyan made a controversial U-turn, quashing this circular.

Writing for The Wire, internationally-renowned scientist Lawrence Rajendran had essayed his own experiences with casteism in school and noted, “Such practices can insidiously develop into serious societal conflict.”

In Coimbatore, Naresh had to put in minimal legwork in securing the certificate.

The news agency IANS has reported that Naresh approached Coimbatore District Collector, G.S. Sameeran, who directed him to the tehsildar of Coimbatore North. Naresh was asked to sign an affidavit stating that he was aware that such a certificate would mean that Vilma will not be eligible for any government reservation or relaxations based on either caste or religion.

Also read: What Are the Implications of Giving up a Caste Certificate?

He also had to submit Vilma’s birth certificate and Aadhaar details, he told The News Minute.

A week after Naresh submitted the document, he got the ‘no caste, no religion’ certificate. The text of the certificate is simple: ‘Baby GN Vilma does not belong to any caste or religion.’

Naresh, who is inspired by Bharathiyaar, Ambedkar and Periyar, and  Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukural, told news organisations that he hoped that this step would inspire others to do the same.

Earlier in May, 2022, Times of India had reported that a Maharashtra lawyer, Preetisha Saha had applied to the district administration to delink her caste and religious identity and get a certificate declaring that she belongs to ‘no caste, no religion’.

On February 5, 2019, another lawyer, Sneha Parthibaraja from Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, became the first in the country to get a ‘no caste, no religion’ certificate from the authorities.

Don’t Withhold Pension, Benefits of SC/ST Employees Without Verified Caste Certificates: Parl Panel

A list of 136 deprived pensioners was submitted to Committee. It said, “withholding pension benefits for these persons is gross harassment.”

New Delhi: The Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has recommended that the Department of Personnel and Training should issue guidelines that caste certificates of SC/ST employees be verified within six months of their joining service, failing which they should be treated as authentic unless otherwise proved before the employee’s confirmation.

The recommendation by the Committee has come in its ninth report on Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. The report titled “Study of atrocity cases against Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes with respect to implementation of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 with special reference to cases related to withholding of pensions and retirement benefits of SC/ST employees” was presented to the Lok Sabha on December 13.

The Committee, chaired by BJP Lok Sabha MP Premjibhai Solanki and comprising 19 other members of the Lower House and 10 of the Rajya Sabha, had taken up the issue of atrocities on SC/ST employees through the process verification of caste certificates in 2020-21 and continued with the subject this fiscal.

`Immediate verification will prevent employment on basis of false certificate’

In its report, the Committee said, “If the organisation carried out the verification process immediately on joining of a person, then no person can gain employment on the basis of a false caste certificate.”

Stating that it had observed that at present “verification of caste certificate is started at the fag end of the career of the employee,” the panel said, “withholding pension benefits for these persons is gross harassment of the employee, both mental and financial, and also physical because a person nearing retirement is almost a senior citizen with numerous health and family responsibilities.”

Also read: Centre’s Opaque Auction Rules for Pulses Helped Millers Profit at Expense of Government

The Committee also recommended that DoPT, in coordination with the state governments, should “make verification of caste certificate a time-bound exercise so that it is not used as a tool to harass gullible SC and ST employees at the time of retirement” by any organisation, department, PSU or autonomous body.

It said the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions should also issue clear guidelines to all these organisations, PSUs and banks, etc., that caste certificate of a person should be verified within six months of their joining. It also stated that the State Level Scrutiny Committee, which has issued the certificate, should also be asked to verify the authenticity of the certificate within six months or before the confirmation of the employee, whichever is later.

`No action should be taken on anonymous complaints’

On the issue of verification process taking a long time because of the inaccessibility of old records, the Committee cited an office memorandum of DoPT and a circular of the Central Vigilance Commission to state that “verification of only those employees with ST caste certificates should be done who were appointed after 1995” and that “no action should be taken on anonymous/ pseudonymous complaints”.

It added that “pension benefits and emoluments of SC/ST person who were appointed before 1995 should not be withheld in case their caste certificates have not been verified” and “for those employees who have been appointed after 1995, the process of verification should be completed within three months from date of presentation of report of the committee.”

The parliamentary panel has also recommended that DoPT frame suitable guidelines in consultation with the state government and Ministry of Law and Justice to resolve these issues and to protect the interests of the retiring or retired employees.

The panel noted that it had received representations from various SC/ST organisation, and the Akhil Bhartiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad in particular, wherein it was alleged that Scheduled Tribe employees were being harassed in various government organisations and departments, including the public sector undertakings, at the time of their retirement.

It was also claimed in these representations that the retirement benefits or pensions of these employees were being withheld at the time of their retirement, saying that their caste certificate had not been verified.

The Parishad submitted a representation on July 27, 2020 in which it was stated that various organisations in Tamil Nadu as also PSU banks and undertakings were resorting to such harassment of their ST employees.

List of 136 ‘deprived pensioners’ was submitted to Committee

The panel also received a detailed list as per which there were a total of 136 “deprived pensioners”. These comprised 17 to whom provisional pension was not paid, seven who had passed away (including three whose case was settled) and 11 others whose cases were settled.

The Union ministries whose departments figured in the list included Railways, Shipping, Finance, Communication, Labour and Employment, and the Education Department.

During a sitting of the Committee in September 2020, the panel chairperson said he was “pained to see that several of these employees had even passed away while still awaiting justice in their lives”.

In the meeting, the additional secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training expressed submitted that “there was no point in verification of caste certificate of a person unless there was a genuine complaint against it from an authentic source”.

`No provision to withhold pension for lack of verification of caste certificate’

The panel recorded that the Secretary DoPT was “very clear that there was no provision under any circular of DoPT whereby pension of an employee could be withheld for want of verification of his/her caste certificate”.

It added that the secretary of pension and pensioners’ welfare agreed with the view and “categorically statement that unless there was administrative, legal proceedings of a department against an employee, his/her pension cannot be stopped and that too with the approval of the President”.

Also read: Parliamentary Panel Report Points to Water Contamination in 48,969 Rural Habitations

It was also pointed out in the meeting that while the Department of Pension and Pensioners Welfare framed rules for the departments which came under Central Civil Services Rules, the autonomous bodies and PSUs and state governments were free to have their own policies with regard to employment benefits and pension and this was the reason for discrepancies which arise in implementation of pension rules across different PSUs, banks and state governments.

It was the secretary of the Department of Telecommunications who observed that the verification of the caste certificate should be done immediately after joining of an employee. He said directions to the effect had been issued in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and the same procedure of time-bound verification should be followed by all state governments and PSUs.

‘Benefits should accrue till caste certificate is nullified by competent authority’

The Committee recorded that “the Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs raised a very valid point that until and unless the caste certificate of a person has been nullified by the competent authority, he or she belongs to that caste and should accrue all benefits thereon”. One member of the Committee had also expressed his anguish that so many people were suffering due to administrative laxity and incompetence.

Subsequently, the members of the parliamentary committee had “unanimously agreed that there was no way that salaries and other benefits accrued by a person during his entire in an organisation can neither be taken back nor reimbursed and hence withholding pension of these persons is amounting to atrocity on them”.

Therefore all PSUs and other organisation with the pending cases were asked by the Committee to submit a status report within two months.

PSUs, TN official, ministries apprised Committee of status

In December 2020, another meeting was convened in which the organisations which were not able to provide a “favourable outcome” were called. Since a number of cases pertained to the state of Tamil Nadu, the chief secretary was also summoned with the state speaker’s permission. Appearing before the panel, the chief secretary of Tamil Nadu said while till 1989 all caste certificates were issued by tehsildar, as “there were too many complaints regarding issue of false caste certificates”, the power was given to Revenue Divisional Officers.

He said a Vigilance Cell was formed in 2012 to verify the certificates in 38 districts but as the number of cases of false certificates kept rising, the number of State-level Vigilance Committees were also increased. The official sought two months’ time to resolve these cases.

Since the complaints pertaining to PSUs were also persisting, the Committee held a third meeting in March 2021 for the central ministries.

On the basis of the discussions during all these meetings, the Committee came out with its observations and recommendations.

Bombay HC Cancels Caste Certificate of Amravati MP Navneet Rana

The independent MP, backed by the NCP, said she would challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday cancelled the caste certificate of Amravati Lok Sabha member Navneet Kaur Rana, saying it was obtained fraudulently using fabricated documents, and also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on her.

The independent MP, who won from a constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes, said she would challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court.

A division bench of Justices R.D. Dhanuka and V.G. Bisht asked Rana to surrender the certificate within six weeks and asked her to pay a penalty of Rs 2 lakh to the Maharashtra Legal Services Authority within two weeks.

The high court held that Rana’s claim of belonging to ‘Mochi’ caste for obtaining the Scheduled Caste certificate itself was fraudulent and made with the intention of obtaining various benefits available to a candidate from such category, despite knowing she does not belong to that caste.

Rana was elected from Maharashtra’s Amravati Lok Sabha seat in 2019. She is independent, but backed by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

“The application (for caste certificate) was made intentionally to make a fraudulent claim to enable the respondent no.3 (Rana) to contest the election for the post of member of parliament on a seat reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate,” the Bombay high court said in its judgement.

“In our view, since respondent no.3 has obtained the caste certificate fraudulently and got it validated fraudulently from the Caste Scrutiny Committee by producing fabricated and fraudulent documents, such caste certificate is cancelled and stands confiscated,” the bench said.

“It is needless to observe that all the consequences in law providing upon cancellation of such fraudulently obtained caste certificate and caste validity certificate shall follow,” the high court added.

The court in its judgement also noted the “abysmal” functioning of the scrutiny committee.

The Bombay high court passed its order on a petition filed by social worker Anandrao Adsule, seeking cancellation of the caste certificate dated August 30, 2013, issued by Mumbai deputy collector, identifying Rana as belonging to the ‘Mochi’ caste.

Adsule had filed a complaint with the Mumbai District Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee, which ruled in Rana’s favour and validated the certificate. Adsule then approached the high court.

He contended that Rana obtained the certificate using forged and fabricated documents.

It was obtained by using the influence of Navneet Rana’s husband Ravi Rana, who was a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, he alleged.

The high court held that the order passed by the Scrutiny Committee was “totally perverse, without the application of mind and contrary to the evidence on record”.

The bench noted that the original birth certificate of Navneet Rana did not mention the caste ‘Mochi’.

“In our view, there are two sets of documents produced by the respondent no.3 (Navneet Rana) which were contradictory to each other before the scrutiny committee. The respondent no.3 had claimed to be ‘Sikh Chamar’ as well as ‘Ravidasiya Mochi’,” the high court said.

“A wrong caste validity certificate granted in favour of the party who does not belong to that caste may deprive a genuine and deserving person belonging to such reserve category of the benefits prescribed in the Constitution of India,” the court said in its order.

The high court said in its view, the terms ‘Chamar’ and ‘Mochi’ are not synonymous and are different identities.

The scrutiny committee did its job “rather sloppily and shirked the obligations (imposed on it)”, the high court observed.

“The scrutiny committee has totally ignored the objections raised by the complainant and also by the vigilance cell in respect of the documents (submitted by Navneet Rana to support her claim that she belongs to Mochi caste),” it said.

It said the scrutiny committee allowed the caste claim in favour of Navneet Rana even though she failed to “discharge her burden by producing authentic and clear evidence”.

“The scrutiny committee is not an adjudicating authority but an administrative body that verifies facts, investigates into a specific claim of caste status and ascertains whether the caste/tribe status claim is correct or not,” the court said.

Rana said she will approach the Supreme Court against the high court verdict.

“I respect the (high) court’s order as a citizen of this country. I will approach the Supreme Court, I am confident that I will get justice,” the Amravati MP said.

(PTI)

Karnataka: 973 Cases Registered Against Persons Who Obtained False Caste Certificates

Minister Govind Karjol said only 12 of these cases have resulted in convictions.

New Delhi: The Karnataka government has booked 973 cases against persons who obtained false caste certificates – including 68 cases against candidates who obtained fake certificates to contest elections, deputy chief minister Govind Karjol told the assembly on Monday.

According to Deccan Herald, Karjol, who is also the state’s social welfare minister, said persons belonging to forward castes had obtained “false” caste certificates to avail benefits, including reservations in education and jobs. “Mogaveera caste people obtained (certificates) as Moger, Lingayat Jangama as Beda Jangama, Kuruba as Kadu Kuruba/Jenu Kuruba/Gond and Maaleru as Maleru and others also obtained SC/ST caste certificates,” he said.

However, of the 973 cases, only 12 led to convictions.

He said the government could only do so much against people who obtain false caste certificates. “Their mindset should change,” the minister said.

Caste certificates are issued by the revenue department to people belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Communities to avail benefits they are entitled to. “We have written to the revenue department seeking action against 27 tahsildars for issuing false caste certificates without proper verification,” Karjol said, according to Deccan Herald.

The minister said that if the house agrees, the law can be ammended to take action against tahsildars, who currently fall under the jurisdiction of the revenue department.

What Are the Implications of Giving up a Caste Certificate?

A woman was applauded for receiving a ‘no-caste’ certificate, but for many, such a move would mean losing access to opportunities.

On February 5, 2019, a 35-year-old lawyer, Sneha Parthibaraja from Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, obtained a “no caste-no religion” certificate from the authorities concerned. Parthibaraja regarded it to be the culminating moment of her nine-year effort to assert her disbelief in caste. “When people who believe in caste and religion have certificates, why not issue certificates to people like us?” she remarked.

This act garnered a lot of praise and appreciation from various people, one of them being renowned film icon Kamal Haasan, who is also the chief of the newly constituted political party, Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) – a party that garnered close to 4% vote in Tamil Nadu on its debut in the 2019 general elections. Known for his pun-laden witticisms, Haasan posted two tweets (one in Tamil and the other in English) from his official twitter handle.

In his English tweet, he says, “From this point, a better tomorrow will be more accessible” and in his Tamil tweet, he says “Let us also ‘reserve’ space for those people who still adamantly claim that a casteless society is not possible.” A number of tweets with hashtags like #NoCaste and #NoReligion sprang up on social media platforms.

Picking up from the word ‘accessible’ from Haasan’s tweet, it can be argued that a caste certificate acts as an important tool that empowers the holder to claim her/his rights and opportunities. The document is instrumental in making the state more accessible to the person holding it and ensuring social justice. Three questions are pertinent here. What does giving up one’s caste certificate mean? Is it the same as giving up one’s caste or religion? If this starts as a movement, what are the implications of giving up one’s caste certificate?

To answer these questions, one needs to unpack two of the multiple faces or manifestations of caste; caste as a social reality, that is, the institution, and caste as a unit of governance, of which the certificate is an instrument.

Kamal Haasan has praised Sneha for receiving the certificate. Credit: PTI

Caste as a social reality

Caste is a tag that a person is born into, an ideology and not something that a person earns. The hierarchy, therefore, is given. For instance, Ambedkar observed, “…There is no such thing as caste. There are only castes…” In other words, Ambedkar argued that the system was thriving on relational terms and the underlying point of differentiation being ritual purity, that is, lower castes are impure and upper castes are pure.

Also Read: So the Term ‘Dalit’ Can’t Be Used But ‘Brahmin’ and 6,000 Other Caste Names Can

He moves on to argue that this ritual hierarchy is internalised by every other caste, thereby making it a resilient system. It is defended not just by the upper castes, but also by the middle castes to secure their position in society. He also regarded this to be the reason for the naturalisation of violence in the name of caste. Therefore, the discrimination that needs to be fought is essentially the institution of caste, i.e., the state of mind and the notion of the discriminated in the minds of the discriminators.

Caste as a unit of governance

The other aspect of caste is as an identifier to facilitate governance. This aspect of caste can be traced back to the post-1857 period, when the British decided not to interfere in the personal affairs of its subjects. Nicholas Dirks argues that the British colonial administration that replaced local kingship in the post-1857 period is responsible for the caste system, as we know it.

Dirks even differentiates the conceptualisation of caste between pre-and post-1857 periods. To the early orientalists and explorers,

“[Caste] worked both to explain how Indian society could be orderly in the absence of either political authority or tradition, and why it was that Indian society would never become mobilized around the political aims of national self-determination…” (Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Minds: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, 2001))

However, in the post-1857 period, studies on caste were done differently by the orientalists, and the reliance on material shifted from textual to empirical sources. Dirks observed:

Gone is the ubiquitous reliance on Manu; orientalism has become empiricist rather than textual…it also eclipsed earlier enthusiasms for things Indian, even if, as in the case of most early orientalists, these enthusiasms were exclusively for ancient Indian civilization (Nicholas Dirks, ‘Castes of Minds’, Representations, 1992).

In other words, caste was used as a tool to identify people and segregate them to govern, according to specific predicaments, be it backwardness – social or educational, discrimination – or place in society. Notably, to this day, the 1931 census serves as the government’s resource to intervene in the spheres of provision of rights, affirmative action and social welfare schemes.

Therefore, one could argue that a caste certificate is a representation of a social reality and not its perpetuator. It is an instrument which enables persons to negotiate with the state for their rights and opportunities. The rights and opportunities then equip people to improve their life conditions on the one hand and fight the discrimination they are subject to, stemming from the notion of ascriptive superiority, on the other. Diametrically opposite to Haasan’s claims, it is a document that promotes accessibility and an instrument to ensure social justice.

Notes of caution on giving up caste certificates

Parthibaraja justifies her act on two grounds. One, she has not availed any benefits that involve the caste certificate and two, she believes that she has the means to live without it. Further, she even appealed to people from all castes and religions who have the means to do well without these certificate to give them up, to help the needy sections get their due.

In this context, the reality is that the needy sections comprise a large proportion and there is a long way to go. For instance, why does a person get lynched when he sports a moustache? While most of us hate the lynch mob, can we surely say that by giving up his caste certificate, the victim would not have been lynched? In most cases of caste violence, victims live in close proximity to the perpetrators. So can we then say that the caste certificate is not an identifier for the perpetrator in the society and giving it up does not help with the problems of that realm? Moreover, in such an instance, if there was a “no-caste certificate,” the victim could not have filed a case against the perpetrator for the essence of the crime committed, under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. On the archetypal question regarding its misuse, like in the case of any other instrument, there are instances of misuse of caste certificates. The question, however, is: Where do we locate the fault, in the misuser or in the instrument?

Also Read: Why Reservations Have to be About Social and Not Just Economic Disadvantage

When seen together, Parthibaraja’s remarks give us a sense of her rejection of the idea of caste and her choice of not availing the ensuing benefits, which might not be the natural consequence of giving up of caste certificates. It is worth noting that the imagination of an equal and a casteless society starts at the end of the notion, acts and effects of discrimination on the grounds of ascriptive identities like caste. Thus, giving up caste certificates, may promote “caste-blindness” which is antithetical to the idea of a harmonious society in the Indian context.

Vignesh is a doctoral student at the King’s India Institute, King’s College London. He tweets @krvtweets.

CBI Books Two Medical Council of India Employees for Graft

Sandeep Kumar and Santosh Kumar allegedly demanded and obtained a bribe of Rs 4 lakh from Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital and Research Centre for showing undue favour in first year registration of MBBS students with MCI.

New Delhi: The CBI has booked two employees of the Medical Council of India (MCI) and a Hyderabad-based medical college in a bribery case to settle alleged irregular admission in 2016-17, officials said.

It is alleged that the MCI employees, Sandeep Kumar and Santosh Kumar, in conspiracy with a private person, Sushil Kumar, were abusing their official positions and also allegedly took bribes from various private medical colleges in order to show favour in miscellaneous work pending with the MCI.

“It was further alleged that Sandeep Kumar and Santosh Kumar conspired with Sushil Kumar. They demanded and obtained a bribe of Rs 4 lakh from Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital and Research Center, Peeracheru, Himayatsagar Road, Hyderabad in September, 2017 for showing undue favour in a matter pertaining to first year registration of MBBS students with MCI for the academic year 2016-17,” a CBI Spokesperson said.

The agency carried out searches at mutiple locations in connection with the case.

Information further revealed that Sandeep Kumar was posted in the MCI monitoring section and was tasked to process various communications received from medical colleges which were to be placed before mandarins of the MCI, the FIR alleged.

Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences Teachning Hospital and Research Centre is a recognised medical college with the intake of 150 MBBS students.

In 2016, it admitted five students in general category for which query was raised by the MCI as they had less than 50 per centile marks in NEET. The college allegedly claimed they were OBC candidates and submitted caste certificates. It said their names were entered in general category by mistake, the FIR alleged.

The notice was withdrawn by the MCI after explanation.

The CBI said clarification regarding one student was highly suspicious as caste certificate was issued five days after clarification was sought by the MCI.

It is alleged that by way of regularising the course of action regarding admission of five MBBS candidates Sandeep Kumar, Santosh Kumar, who worked with MCI, and a private person Sushil Kumar collected Rs 4 lakh from an employee of Shadan Institute of medical sciences.