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2006 (2) TMI 710

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..... ten examination. In 1993 he was called for interview. The result of the successful candidates was published and he stood at 759th rank in order of merit. He was also allotted Indian Information Service Grade A. However, the appellant did not receive any final posting order, which had resulted in filing many representations to the Union of India. In one of representations dated 14th September, 1994 the appellant also stated that he belongs to Scheduled Tribe category and his sub-caste is Oraon. Having failed to receive any positive response from the respondents, he filed an Original Application before the Central Administrative Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi being O.A. No. 2291 of 1994, inter alia, seeking direction to the Union of India to allow the appellant to join training. In response to the notice issued by the Tribunal, the Union of India, by its letter dated 9th November, 1994, conveyed to the Tribunal that the appellant has not been brought up in tribal environment and that his father is a non-tribal and, therefore, he cannot be treated as a Scheduled Tribe. Further, the Union of India, as directed by the Tribunal, conducted the enquiry into the question whether th .....

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..... le one of whom belongs to Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes'. He particularly referred to the portion when a Scheduled Tribe woman marries a non-Scheduled Tribe man, the children from such marriage may be treated as members of the Scheduled Tribe community, if the marriage is accepted by the community and the children are treated as members of their own community. Such Circulars issued from time to time, being not law within the meaning of Article 13 of the Constitution of India, it would be of no assistance to the appellant on the face of the Constitutional provisions. Further, the facts of this case are however different with the facts in which the circular was sought to be clarified. Undisputedly, the marriage of the appellant's mother (tribal woman) to one Lakshmi Kant Sahay (Kayastha) was a court marriage performed outside the village. Ordinarily, the court marriage is performed when either of the parents of bride or bridegroom or the community of the village objects to such marriage. In such a situation, the bride or the bridegroom suffers the wrath of the community of the village and runs the risk of being ostracised or ex-communicated from the village community. The .....

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..... acterized by Dr. Gupta, Jai Prakash in The Customary Laws of the Munda the Oraon quoted by this Court in State of Kerala vs. Chandramohanan (2004) 3 SCC 429 at 432 as under: Tribe has been defined as a social group of a simple kind, the members of which speak common dialect, have a single government and act together for such common purposes as warfare. Other typical characteristics include a common name, a contiguous territory, a relatively uniform culture or way of life and a tradition of common descent. Tribes are usually composed of a number of local communities e.g. bands, villages or neighbourhoods and are often aggregated in clusters of a higher order called nations. The term is seldom applied to societies that have achieved a strictly territorial organization in large States but is usually confined to groups whose unity is based primarily upon a sense of extended kinship ties though it is no longer used for kin groups in the strict sense, such as clans. Bhowmik, K.L. in Tribal India: a profile in India Ethnology observed: Tribe in the Dictionary of Anthropology is defined as 'a social group, usually with a definite area, dialect, cultural homogeneity and unify .....

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..... rt at page 221 in para 39 observed as under:- 39. A person in fact not belonging to the Scheduled Caste, if claims himself to be a member thereof by procuring a bogus caste certificate, would be committing fraud on the Constitution. No court of law can encourage commission of such fraud Further in Punit Rai's case (supra) in paragraph 27, this Court observed that: 27. The caste system in India is ingrained in the Indian mind. A person, in the absence of any statutory law, would inherit his caste from his father and not his mother even in a case of intercaste marriage. In the case of Valsamma Paul (Mrs.) vs. Cochin University and others (1996) 3 SCC 545 this Court again examined the entire gamut and came to the conclusion that the condition precedent for acquiring Scheduled Tribes Certificate one must suffer the disabilities - Socially, Economically and Educationally. The facts of that case are important and may be recited in a nutshell. Two posts of Lecturers in Law Department of Cochin University were notified for recruitment, one of which was reserved for Latin Catholics (Backward Class Fishermen). The appellant was a Syrian Catholic (a Forward Class). She mar .....

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..... se of other economic benefits under Articles 15(4) and 46, or in appointment to an office or a post under the State under Article 16(4). Therefore, when a member is transplanted into the Dalits, Tribes and OBCs, he/she must of necessity also have had undergone the same handicaps, and must have been subjected to the same disabilities, disadvantages, indignities or sufferings so as to entitle the candidate to avail the facility of reservation. A candidate who had the advantageous start in life being born in Forward Caste and had march of advantageous life but is transplanted in Backward Caste by adoption or marriage or conversion, does not become eligible to the benefit of reservation either under Article 15(4) or 16(4), as the case may be. Acquisition of the status of Scheduled Caste etc. by voluntary mobility into these categories would play fraud on the Constitution, and would frustrate the benign constitutional policy under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution. In view of the catena of decisions of this Court, the questions raised before us are no more res integra. The condition precedent for granting tribe certificate being that one must suffer disabilities wherefrom .....

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