| Published on 20-02-2008 In National |
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| Desperate MP CM digs Cong. leaders' skeletons |
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Written by
N.D.Sharma |
Shivraj Singh Chauhan's BJP government has at last found something against Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Jamuna Devi, who has rattled the chief minister by taking corruption charges against him and his wife Sadhna Singh to the Lokayukta. After a massive hunt through the government records, it has been "discovered" that Jamuna Devi is guilty of fraudulently procuring the Scheduled Tribe certificate for her daughter for the latter's admission in the ST quota in the Indore Medical College 40 years ago.
An FIR was registered, on behalf of a dummy complainant, at the Sanyogitaganj police station in Indore under Sections 420,465 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), naming Jamuna Devi, her daughter Hemlata Verma and her brother Narayan Singh Sengar as the accused.
The FIR says that Narayan Singh Sengar, who was SDO (Police) at Jhabua, had issued the ST certificate in 1968 to Jamuna Devi's daughter, Hemlata on the basis of which she was admitted to the Mahatma Gandhi Medical (MGM) College in Indore in the ST quota. After completing her MBBS, she did her Master of Surgery in obstetrics and gynaecology from there and then joined the M.Y.Hospital, attached to the MGM College, as well as the teaching faculty at the College where she is a Professor now. Sengar went up the ladder in the police department and retired as Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG). His action (of issuing the ST certificate) was never questioned.
The complaint does not question the Scheduled Tribal status of Jamuna Devi (who was elected MLA from a reserved seat first time in 1952) but says that she had married a non-tribal and her daughter was, therefore, not eligible for taking advantage of the tribal quota. It says that Jamuna Devi, as Member of Parliament, had exerted pressure on her brother (then having the DSP rank) for issuing an ST certificate to her daughter.
The ST status of the offspring of the tribal-non-tribal parents was not questioned in those days. There was no specific law enacted by the government in this regard. However, the government had made it clear through a circular that "when a tribal woman marries a non-tribal man, the children from such marriage may be treated as members of the Scheduled Tribe Community". Only in the Northeast had some tribal communities some sort of code to guide them in the matters of inheritance.
It was only in the last decade that the legality of the tribal status of the children of tribal mother and non-tribal father was questioned and put to a judicial scrutiny. One Anjan Kumar of Gaya in Bihar, who was born out of a marriage between a Kayastha man and a woman from Oraon tribe in Madhya Pradesh, was denied final posting as an Indian Information Service Grade-A officer in spite of his having cleared the 1993 Civil Services Examination in the Scheduled Tribe category. His plea was dismissed in December 1995 on the ground that he was not a member of the Scheduled Tribes. He moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court against the order but failed to get relief. He then appealed in the Supreme Court against the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment.
A division bench of the apex court, comprising Justice H.K.Sema and Justice A.R.Lakshmanan ruled in February 2006 that children born out of a marriage between a tribal woman and a non-tribal Forward Class man cannot claim the status of Scheduled Tribe and seek employment in the government under the reserved category.
Such children, they said, cannot claim Scheduled Tribe status as they were brought up in a Forward Class atmosphere and they were not subjected to any disabilities. "A person not belonging to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, claiming himself to be a member of such caste by procuring a bogus caste certificate, is cheating (on) the Constitution of India," the court observed. Upholding the Madhya Pradesh High Court order, the apex court bench quashed the Scheduled Tribe certificate issued to Anjan Kumar by Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Gaya in August 1992. The court observed, "The authority before whom such claim (for ST certificate) is made is duty bound to satisfy itself that the applicant suffered disabilities socially, economically and educationally before such a certificate is issued. Any concerned authority issuing such certificates in a routine manner will be committing dereliction of Constitutional duty."
Anjan Kumar's counsel had drawn the court's attention to the Union Home Ministry's circular for according ST status to the children of tribal mother and non-tribal father. But the court said, "Such circulars, being not law within the meaning of Article 13 of the Constitution, would be of no assistance to the appellant on the face of the Constitutional provisions".
Another case of similar nature was reported from Jharkhand but it was in the post-Supreme Court judgment period. Salila was given admission against the ST quota in Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi. Her inclusion in the ST category was opposed by another (Forward) student, Savita Bala Tuti, on the ground that Salila's father was non-tribal (though her mother was tribal). Savita Bala Tuti moved the High Court challenging the government's decision to issue ST certificate to Salila. The Tribal Medical Association had already filed a case in the High Court challenging the government's decision to give ST certificates to the children whose fathers were non-tribal. The High Court clubbed both the petitions for hearing.
A division bench, comprising Chief Justice M.K.Vinayagam and Justice M.N.Tewary, ruled in June last year that the offspring of a non-tribal father and a tribal mother are not entitled to ST reservation benefits. The court directed the government to admit Tuti in place of Salila in the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences.
If Shivraj Singh Chauhan sincerely believed that an illegality had been committed, he should have gone to the Supreme Court. It would have been interesting to see how the apex court would have dealt with a 40-year-old situation in the light of its two-year-old ruling. Registration of an FIR in the matter was apparently a sheer misuse of the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). |
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