State has over 1 lakh pending cases, divisional committees facing severe staff crunch
Mumbai : While the BJP government is all set to perform the ground-breaking ceremony for the proposed Babasaheb Ambedkar memorial in the premises of Indu Mills at Dadar at the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 11, the state government is paying lip service towards the requirements of scheduled castes and tribes.
Twelve out of the 15 divisional committees for scrutinising caste validity certificates in the state are headless, resulting in pendency of cases involving students and politicians from the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, nomadic and denotified tribes.
There are 15 divisional committees located at Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Nashik, Solapur, Kolhapur, Pune, Ratnagiri, Dhule, Amravati, Akola, Nagpur, Chandrapur, Aurangabad, Yevatmal and Latur.
Of these, except Pune, Dhule and Akola, all committees are headless. This has affected the scrutiny of caste certificates.
In 2013, the state government had decided to clear the pending cases and create district-wise panels and had created additional posts of officials of additional collector level. However, even before the district-wise panels can be created, the existing 15 divisional panels are facing a staff crunch.
In February this year, the High Court had directed the state government to clear the 1.06 lakh pending cases.
The minister for social justice Rajkumar Badole told FPJ: “We have raised this issue again and again, however, the required number of officials is still not available to head the divisional committees.”
He pointed out that since officials of additional collector level were from the revenue department, he was helpless. He said that he had no choice but to remind the revenue department intermittently.
A senior official from the revenue department said that efforts were being made to provide officials to head the committees.
Rakshit Sonawane
