The state's submission came in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Samast Adivasi Samaj, which had challenged the caste certificates issued to certain members of the Bharwad, Charan, and Rabari community.
After vigilance cells were constituted by the state government to ascertain the correctness of the caste certificates produced by the students seeking admission in medical courses, the authorities have informed the Gujarat High Court that admission granted to 28 candidates under the scheduled tribes (STs) category has been withdrawn. The government has further submitted that the vigilance report has recommended the cancellation of caste certificates of 64 other candidates.
The state's submission came in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Samast Adivasi Samaj, which had challenged the caste certificates issued to certain members of the Bharwad, Charan, and Rabari community.
The state government's tribal development department informed the court that it had undertaken an exercise to verify the caste certificates of 609 medical aspirants through vigilance cells. It submitted that after a thorough probe, the vigilance cell recommended the cancellation of caste certificate of 64 aspirants, whereas admission granted to 28 others was withdrawn.
Notably, the petitioner had argued that the rights, as well as benefits available to STs, were exhausted by persons not entitled to such reservation, more specifically for admission in the professional medical courses.
The petition stated that members of the Bharwad, Charan and Rabari community, residing in the nesses in the forests of Aalech, Gir, and Barda, were declared as Scheduled Tribe. But the state government then issued instructions to issue ST certificates to all member of the community, with the same name, but residing outside the notified areas. This, the petition said, was unjust to the members of the ST community as the above mentioned three communities are also recognised as OBCs.
The petitioner had contended that bogus scheduled tribes caste certificate holders were eating away all the benefits meant for original tribals. It was also contended that there were a large number of unemployed engineers, PhD scholars and graduates in various eastern tribal districts of Gujarat, who were jobless as their jobs were being taken away by these bogus caste certificate holders. Following the submissions made by the state government, the court disposed off the petition clarifying that the petitioner can approach the authorities in case of any lacuna observed by it.
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