In a significant decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday held that any person, who forges caste certificate, will lose all resultant benefits that accrue in that name. The sweep of the decision will cover not just persons taking up Government employment but to candidates who win elections to Parliament and State Assemblies as well.
The court held that such appointment to any office will be declared void.
The Bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar, Justices NV Ramana and DY Chandrachud, while deciding on a bunch of appeals emanating from Maharashtra, said, “Where a benefit is secured by an individual - such as an appointment to a post or admission to an educational institution - on the basis that the candidate belongs to a reserved category for which the benefit is reserved, the invalidation of the caste or tribe claim upon verification would result in the appointment or, as the case may be, the admission being rendered void or non est.”
Justice Chandrachud, who authored the judgment, said that reservation of posts in public employment and seats for admission in educational institutions and the setting apart of seats in electoral bodies were envisaged by Constitution makers to achieve social justice to Scheduled Castes and Tribes and to socially and educationally backward classes of citizens.
It held, “When a person who does not belong to a caste, tribe or class for whom reservation is meant, seeks to pass off as its member, such a stratagem constitutes a fraud on the Constitution… This constitutes an egregious constitutional fraud. It is a fraud on the statutes which implement the provisions of the Constitution. It is a fraud on state policy.”
The Bench set aside a Bombay High Court Full Bench decision of 2014, which held that the public servants, whose caste certificate is found to be fake, can remain in service if he or she has spent sufficient time in the job. Fortunately, the court did not unsettle the previously decided cases as it held that its decision will not apply retrospectively.