Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to form a committee to examine whether individuals can provide details of their mother’s caste or social status on the ‘Aaple Sarkar’ portal in exceptional cases to obtain caste certificates.
A bench of Justices Ravindra Ghughe and Ashwin Bhobe asked the government to consider modifying the portal to include such a provision.
“We call upon the State Government to consider the said aspect and since it involves a decision to be taken by the Government, it would be appropriate for the Government to constitute a proper committee which is assisted with data/information, so as to consider, whether a clause in exceptional circumstances, can be entered in the ‘Aaple Sarkar’ portal to enable an applicant to tender the details of the mother’s social status,” the Court stated.
The Aaple Sarkar portal provides citizens access to various government services, including caste certificate applications.
The Court was hearing a petition filed by Swanubhuti Jain, 30, who sought a caste certificate based on her mother’s status as a member of the Shimpi community, categorised as Other Backward Class (OBC).
She was represented by Advocates Aditya Pratap and Abha Singh. However, her request was denied because the portal only accepts caste details of the father.
Jain approached the HC to direct the State to amend the portal to allow applicants to enter their mother’s caste details, particularly when it is relevant to their eligibility for reservation.
However, the Court dismissed the plea, stating that Jain had failed to prove she was raised exclusively by her mother or that her upbringing was influenced by her mother’s caste. It noted that her father, a bank officer, had financially supported her education, and the family lived together in the same house where she led a life in an “upper-caste father’s house”.
Additionally, her mother obtained her OBC certificate only in 2022, after which Jain applied for her own caste certificate.
The Court concluded that Jain’s plea was a strategic move to benefit from her mother’s OBC status despite being raised in her father’s open category household.
“We find that this petition has been filed for self-serving purposes. We also sense that an attempt to misrepresent has been made. However, we wish to give a ‘quietus’ to this issue,” the Court stated.
Despite dismissing the plea, the Court emphasized the need to review the portal’s provisions and directed the State to form a committee to study the possibility of including mother’s caste details in exceptional cases.
