Abuse of caste certificate angers HC

I get an allergy on hearing these routine questions in India by total strangers. “What’s your caste? What’s your native? what’s ………………..?”
Anyway, these sham documents and procedures are common in India. Ambitious parents make separate ‘fake birth certificates'(besides the True certificate) which shows that the children are older than the eligibility limit, so that they can enrol to a higher class in school. Then people make fake domicile certificates, they make fake caste certificates, they conduct sham marriages.

Unless there is a continuous strong deterrent and punitive measures for all the above-mentioned crimes against society and families, India is not going to change.

The good thing is that high caste people are clamouring to be tagged ‘scheduled caste’ and maybe this will weed out casteeism in society—Ha ha!

Abuse of caste certificate angers HC
7 Jan 2009

CHENNAI: Permitting fraudsters to abuse community certificates and enjoy the benefits meant for SC/STs would amount to “raping the Constitution,”
the Madras High Court has said.
Lambasting a Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) employee for having got an appointment on the basis of a spurious ST certificate, a division bench of the court directed the Chennai district collector to initiate criminal proceedings against the employee who had been dismissed by LIC for the fraud.

The bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice S Tamilvanan was passing orders on a writ appeal preferred by T R Vijayanandan on Tuesday. Vijayanandan had joined LIC as typist on the basis of an ST certificate. However, his deceit came to light in 1991 when his certificate was sent for verification. Since then, Vijayanandan had fought three separate rounds of litigation but various agencies such as the district level and state level scrutiny committee, besides the vigilance committee, found the certificate fake.

All the inquiries revealed that the cultural characteristics of Vijayanandan family resembled that of the forward Reddy community and not Konda Reddy, which comes under the ST category. A field-level investigation by an anthropologist also revealed that the school records of T R Renukadevi, Vijayanandan’s sister, stated that she belonged to the Hindu Brahmin community. The SSLC certificate of Vijayanandan did not mention his community.

Citing these pertinent facts, the Bench said: “We are able to see that neither the petitioner (Vijayanandan) nor his ancestors belong to the Konda Reddy community, and it seems that the father of the petitioner (Vijayanandan) had orchestrated the entire episode of creating false community certificates for the benefit of his children.”

Vijayanandan had produced a spurious and false community certificate, the bench concluded, adding, “while for the sake of social status he wanted to maintain as a Reddy, for the sake of his individual benefit he is claiming as if he is belonging to Konda Reddy community, solely with a view to deceive the authorities and to snatch away the benefits extended to underprivileged communities by the Constitution.”

The bench further said: “The petitioner (Vijayanandan) and his deceased father have attempted to play fraud on the Constitution, taking advantage of the similarity between the words Reddy and Konda Reddy. If people of this type are let out freely without being prosecuted and punished, it would amount to raping the Constitution, further shaking the confidence of people.”

The judges then upheld Vijayanandan’s dismissal from service and directed the district collector to book criminal cases against him, as recommended by the state-level scrutiny committee.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *