GAYATRI KRANTIKUMAR SAGAR vs. SCHEDULED TRIBE CASTE SCRUTINY COMMITTEE, AMRAVATI THR. DY. DIRECTOR/MEMBER SECY. AND ANR.

2026:BHC-NAG:4301-DB
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY
NAGPUR BENCH, NAGPUR
WRIT PETITION No.7922 OF 2022 WITH
WRIT PETITION No.7370 OF 2022
----------------
WRIT PETITION No.7922 OF 2022
Gayatri Krantikumar Sagar,
Aged 48 years, Occu. Service,
R/o. At Post Gurudeo Nagar,
Jawala, Tah. Arni,
District Yavatmal-445 105. : PETITIONER
...VERSUS...
1. Scheduled Tribe Caste Scrutiny Committee,
Irwin Chowk, Amravati,
through its Deputy Director/Member Secretary,
2. Zilla Parishad, Yavatmal,
through its Chief Executive Officer,
District- Yavatmal. : RESPONDENTS
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mr. C.R. Sharma, Advocate for Petitioner.
Mrs. H.S. Dhande, Assistant Government Pleader for Respondent No.1.
Mr. V.M. Kulsange, Advocate for Respondent No.2.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
WITH
WRIT PETITION No.7370 OF 2022
Vedant S/o Vivek Sagar,
Aged about 18 years, Occu: Student,
R/o. Near Harve Sabhapati Ground,
Old Cotton Market Road, Amravati,
District- Amravati. : PETITIONER

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...VERSUS...
Scheduled Tribe Caste Scrutiny Committee,
Irwin Chowk, Amravati,
through its Deputy Director/
Member Secretary. : RESPONDENT
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mr. T.U. Tathod, Advocate for Petitioner.
Mrs. H.S. Dhande, Assistant Government Pleader for Respondent.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
CORAM : SMT. M.S. JAWALKAR AND
NANDESH S. DESHPANDE, JJ.
th
RESERVED ON : 10 FEBRUARY, 2026.
th
PRONOUNCED ON : 12 MARCH, 2026.
JUDGMENT : (Per : NANDESH S. DESHPANDE, J.)
1. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith. Heard finally
with the consent of the parties.
2. Gayatri Krantikumar Sagar (Writ Petition No.7922 of
2022) is the paternal aunt of Vedant Vivek Sagar (Writ Petition
No.7370 of 2022), both belonging to the same family. While
Gayatri is an Assistant Teacher serving with respondent No. 2, Zilla
Parishad, Yavatmal since 16.11.1996, Vedant is a student who,
consequent upon the impugned order, lost his confirmed seat at
Ram Meghe Institute of Engineering, Amravati for the B.E. Course
under the Scheduled Tribe category. Both petitioners challenged
the common order dated 11.11.2022 passed by Respondent No. 1,
the Scheduled Tribe Caste Scrutiny Committee, Amravati (for short

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‘the Committee’), received on 14.11.2022, whereby their caste
claims towards ‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe recognized at Entry No. 18 of
the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 are rejected and
their respective Caste Certificates issued by the Sub-Divisional
Officer, Amravati are cancelled.
3. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that in
support of their caste claim, the petitioners have relied upon the
following pre-independence documents, all of which bear the entry
‘Raj’ :

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4. Learned counsel further submits that the petitioner in
Writ Petition No.7922 of 2022 had earlier approached this Court in
Writ Petition No.3840/2009, when respondent No.2 issued a
communication dated 05.08.2009 directing her to produce a
validity certificate. This Court by order dated 20.11.2009 directed
the Committee to decide the claim and restrained respondent No. 2
from disturbing her services. The petitioner has since completed 26
years of unblemished service and now faces coercive action
pursuant to the impugned order.
5. The Committee issued a show cause notice dated
20.10.2022 enclosing the Police Vigilance Cell Report, which
contained entries of ‘Gawandi’ in the Kotwal Book and ‘Maratha’ in
the birth register, treating the same as contrary to the claim. Both
petitioners filed a detailed reply dated 31.10.2022 explaining that
‘Gawandi’ refers to the occupation (‘Rajkam’ Gawandikam) of the
Raj community and not to the caste and that such entries were
recorded inadvertently during the pre-independence era. Despite
the said reply and the documentary evidence on record, the
Committee passed the impugned order dated 11.11.2022 rejecting
the caste claims.
6. Learned counsel further submits that the Committee

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acted perversely in relying solely upon the contra entries of
‘Gawandi’ and ‘Maratha’ from the Vigilance Cell Report while
ignoring the overwhelming pre-independence documentary
evidence clearly bearing the entry ‘Raj’. It is submitted that
‘Gawandi’ denotes the occupation of the Raj community and not the
caste, as specifically explained in the reply dated 31.10.2022, which
the Committee failed to appreciate.
7. It is further submitted that the Committee erroneously
applied the socio-cultural affinity test as the sole criterion to reject
the claim, contrary to the law laid down in Anand Vs. Committee
for Scrutiny [2011(6) Mh.L.J. 919], and wrongly observed that
since the forefathers were educated prior to independence, they
belonged to mainstream society — an observation contrary to the
settled position that entries in the Scheduled Tribes Order by
Presidential Notification must be read as they are, without any
further enquiry. Further reliance is placed on Writ Petition No.54
of 2000.
8. For the sake of brevity, the family tree of the
petitioners is reproduced below :

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9. Per contra, learned counsel for the respondent-
Committee supported the impugned order and submitted that the
Vigilance Cell conducted its enquiry in accordance with the
guidelines laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Ku. Madhuri
Patil Vs. Additional Commissioner & Ors. [(AIR 1995 SC 94)] and
submitted its report on 19.10.2022. The Vigilance Cell obtained the
following documents adverse to the caste claim of the petitioners :

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10. It is submitted that the entries of ‘Gawandi’, ‘Maratha’,
and ‘Raj’ (with overwriting) found in the above documents
spanning from 1915 to 1984 clearly demonstrate that the
petitioners’ family does not belong to ‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe. It is
further submitted that ‘Gawandi’ is a recognized O.B.C. caste listed
at Entry No.45 in the O.B.C. list of Maharashtra, and that in
Vidarbha, ‘Gawandikam’ is also known as ‘Rajkam’, which explains
why certain entries appear as ‘Raj’ referring to the occupation of
mason and not to the Scheduled Tribe. The overwriting in the

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entry of the petitioners’ real brother further creates serious doubt
about the genuineness of the documents and raises an inference of
fraud.
11. It is further submitted that the identical issue of
‘Raj’/‘Gawandi’ nomenclature was considered and conclusively
decided by this Court in Vijay Shankar Pinjarkar v. State (Writ
Petition No.4277/2001, order dated 25.02.2002), wherein this
Court upheld the invalidation order of the Committee. The said
order was upheld in Review Petition No.311/2003 (order dated
15.06.2007) and the Hon’ble Apex Court in Civil Appeal No. 2182-
2183/2011 did not disturb the findings of this Hon’ble Court or the
Committee, thereby confirming the finality of the invalidation
order.
12. It is further submitted that the reliance placed by the
petitioners upon Anand Nilkanth Katole Vs. Committee for Scrutiny
[2011(6) Mh.L.J. 919] is misplaced, as the State of Maharashtra
has filed Special Leave Petition No.10240/2014 and Special Leave
Petition No.17805/2014 before the Hon’ble Apex Court challenging
the said judgment, and the Adiwasi Halba/Halbi Samaj Sanghtana
has also filed Special Leave Petition No.001101/2016 against the
same, all of which are pending. It is submitted that the Committee

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correctly found that the petitioners failed to prove socio-cultural
affinity with ‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe and the impugned order dated
11.11.2022 is just, proper, and in accordance with law, and
deserves to be upheld.
13. Having considered the rival submissions and perused
the record, we find considerable merit in the case of the petitioners.
The core error committed by the Scrutiny Committee is strikingly
similar to the one noticed by this Court in Prashant Damodarrao
Pinjarkar v. State of Maharashtra & Ors., Writ Petition No. 54 of
2000, decided on 06.10.2017, where the Committee had rejected a
‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe claim by ignoring several old school records of
close paternal relatives showing caste as ‘Raj’ and by placing undue
emphasis on two certificates showing ‘Gawandi’. In Prashant
Pinjarkar, the Division Bench held that ‘Gawandi’ referred to the
occupation of masonry, that the caste ‘Raj’ stood consistently
recorded in earlier documents of the father, grandfather, uncle and
cousins, and that the Committee could not have resorted to a
piecemeal and hyper-technical appreciation of material while
discarding such important documents; the invalidation was
therefore quashed and validity was directed to be issued.
14. The Committee’s reliance on Vijay Shankar Pinjarkar v.

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State (Writ Petition No.4277/2001, decided on 25.02.2002) is
clearly misplaced, as that decision involved a different set of
documents and family members where the ‘Raj’ claim was not
supported by sufficient pre-independence records. This position has
been clarified by this Court in Ram s/o Balkrushna Pinjarkar & Ors.
v. The Scheduled Tribes Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee &
Ors., Writ Petition No. 5384 of 2019, decided on 25.07.2022, where
the Committee had rejected ‘Ra’ claims of the same Pinjarkar family
by mechanically relying on Vijay Shankar’s invalidation and certain
‘Gawandi’ entries, despite the Vigilance Cell collecting documents
showing ancestors as ‘Raj’. Thus, the Vijay Shankar’s case could not
operate as a binding precedent against other who produced better
old documents, Further decision in Prashant Pinjarkar (supra)
declaration as ‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe was
binding on the Committee, and that stray ‘Gawandi’ entries could
not outweigh consistent pre-independence ‘Raj’ records.
15. The present case is on identical footing, the petitioners
have produced multiple pre-independence sale-deeds and rights-
register entries (1913-1947) showing forefathers as ‘Raj’, while the
Committee over-relied on three ‘Gawandi’ death extracts, one
‘Maratha’ birth entry and one overwritten ‘Raj’ entry, ignoring their

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explanation that ‘Gawandi’ denotes occupation (mason/‘Rajkam’).
In fact, the oldest document of the year 1913 shows caste as ‘Raj’.
But the impugned order shows that no caste is mentioned in this
document, which is factually incorrect. This Court, in a catena of
judgments, has consistently held that rejection of a document
merely on the ground of variance in handwriting or overwriting,
without the support of expert opinion or forensic evidence, is
wholly unsustainable and amounts to recording a finding without
jurisdictional foundation. Even assuming the Kharij register entry of
02.07.1984 carries overwriting of ‘Raj’, the same cannot discredit
the entire claim when the petitioners’ other pre-independence
documents (1913-1947) consistently and unequivocally record the
caste as ‘Raj’ in the paternal lineage, thereby furnishing a robust
and independent foundation for the claim. Hon’ble Supreme Court
in Anand v. Committee for Scrutiny and Verification of Tribe Claims
(2012) 1 SCC 113, the held that genuine pre-independence records
carry greater probative value than post-independence entries and
that affinity test is only corroborative where documents are weak.
16. The Committee’s approach and non-consideration of
pre-independence ‘Raj’ documents, over-emphasis on stray contra
entries, and cursory invocation of affinity test is contrary to Ku.

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Madhuri Patil v. Addl. Commissioner, Tribal Development, AIR
1995 SC 94, Anand (supra), Prashant Pinjarkar and Ram
Balkrushna Pinjarkar (supra).
17. We are, therefore, of the considered opinion that the
common order dated 11.11.2022 passed by respondent No.1
Scheduled Tribe Caste Scrutiny Committee, Amravati, is
unsustainable in law and liable to be quashed and set aside.
Accordingly, we pass the following order :
O R D E R
(i) Writ Petition Nos.7922 of 2022 and Writ Petition
No.7370 of 2022 are allowed.
(ii) The common order in both the writ petitions
dated 11.11.2022 passed by the Caste Scrutiny
Committee, Amravati is quashed and set aside.
(iii) It is declared that petitioners Gayatri
Krantikumar Sagar and Vedant Vivek Sagar
belong to ‘Raj’ Scheduled Tribe at Entry No.18 of
the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950.
(iv) The respondent No.1 – Scheduled Tribe Caste
Scrutiny Committee, Amravati, is directed to
issue tribe validity certificates certifying that the

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petitioners belongs to ‘Raj’ in favour of both
petitioners within a period of four weeks from
today.
18. Rule is made absolute in above terms. No order as to
costs.
( NANDESH S. DESHPANDE, J. ) ( SMT. M.S. JAWALKAR, J. )
wadode
Signed by: Mr. Devendra Wadode
Designation: PS To Honourable Judge
Date: 16/03/2026 14:38:53