“This kind of capture poses a serious dimension. When a person who does not belong to a caste, tribe or class for whom reservation is meant, seeks to pass of as its member, such a stratagem constitutes a fraud on the Constitution”
A 3-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, Justice NV Ramana and Justice DY Chandrachud in a batch of petitions including one by Maharashtra government and the Food Corporation of India’s Chairman and Managing Director reversed a Bombay High Court verdict and held that if an employee is in service for a long time and later it surfaces that he had got it on the basis of a fake caste certificate, then he would lose the job and be punished.
The apex opinion that no one should be allowed job who has arrogated the benefits on the basis of false representation as this is a fraud with the Indian constitution’s goal of equality and social justice and deprives needy person the benefits of a legitimate entitlement over someone who obtains the advantage with fake certificates.
The bench further added “the constitutional policy of creating reservations sub-serves a high constitutional value of providing social redress and a life of dignity to castes, tribes and classes which were in a historical sense oppressed by a systemic pattern of social exclusion and human deprivation”.
