SC sets aside HC verdict cancelling Amarvati MP Navneet Rana’s caste certificate

But since the 2019 elections, Rana was said to be increasingly gravitating towards the BJP. She formally joined the BJP last month and was granted a ticket to contest from Amravati as a party candidate.

Reacting to the SC verdict, Kaur-Rana said “Those who raised questions on my birth got an answer today. I thank the Supreme Court. The truth always wins. This is a victory of those who walk on the path shown by Baba Saheb Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj…”

Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who was present on Thursday for Kaur-Rana’s filing of nomination, told mediapersons, “Navneet Rana’s caste certificate has been declared valid by the Supreme Court. Those who were questioning the caste validity and doing politics have got a befitting reply through an apex court order.”

Adsul whom Rana had defeated in the 2019 elections had challenged the validity of her caste certificate before the Bombay High Court.

Adsul had prayed before HC for quashing and setting aside the caste certificate issued by Deputy Collector, Mumbai in favour of Kaur-Rana on August 8, 2013, identifying Rana as belonging to the “Mochi” caste.

In June, 2021, a bench of Justices RD Dhanuka and VG Bisht of the HC had cancelled and confiscated the “wrong caste certificate” obtained by Kaur-Rana in 2013, which was validated by Caste Scrutiny Committee in 2017. The HC had said that such an act may “deprive genuine and deserving persons from benefits prescribed in the law.”

The HC had noted that the claim of belonging to the “Mochi” caste made by Kaur-Rana was fraudulent and observed that “two sets of documents” produced by the MP before the Scrutiny Committee were “contradictory to each other”.

Aggrieved by the same, Kaur-Rana had approached the Supreme Court challenging the HC verdict, which the Apex Court had stayed in the same month.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol held that the District Caste Scrutiny Committee, while validating Rana’s caste certificate in 2017, had “duly considered the documents before it” and after “due application of mind”, passed a decision “complying with principles of natural justice”.

The SC noted that the committee’s decision “did not merit any interference” and therefore June, 2021 HC verdict on plea by Adsul be quashed and set aside.

Allowing Kaur-Rana’s appeal, it added that the “Scrutiny Committee is an expert forum armed with fact finding authority and HC ought not to have interfered, especially when the Committee followed due procedure.”

The Scrutiny Committee has verified the claim of appellant holding that appellant belongs to “Mochi” caste in accordance with Entry 11 of Presidential Order as application to Maharashtra, the SC judgement noted.

The apex court also observed that the arguments of the respondents that a reserved category in one state cannot be granted benefit of reservation in another state has no bearing in the present case since in the instant case as the appellant (Kaur-Rana) did not claim “Mochi’ caste based on her caste in some other state.”

“Rather, the claim was for ‘Mochi’ based on the genealogical caste history of appellant’s forefathers,” the SC noted.