Bombay HC Nagpur bench accepts Halba claim, orders caste validity certificates for siblings

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court has held that where old revenue and birth-death records from before Independence name the caste as "Halba", those documents carry the highest legal value. A tribal claim cannot be rejected on the strength of doubtful or inconsistent entries made in later years, the court said. The ruling was delivered by Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke and Justice Raj D. Wakode, and brings major relief to the petitioner siblings.

The petitioners are Prakash Prabhakar Parate and Pragati Prabhakar Parate. Prakash is a rationing inspector and Pragati is a teacher. The Scheduled Tribe Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee, Amravati, had on July 29, 2017 passed an order rejecting their claim to belong to the Halba (Scheduled Tribe) community. They petitioned the Nagpur bench against that order.

The matter had returned to the High Court for fresh hearing on the direction of the Supreme Court. The court made clear that documents from before 1950, that is, before Independence, have high evidentiary value in law. Once such documents are proved genuine and reliable, a genuine claim cannot be turned down on the basis of some mismatched later entries. The committee could not establish any direct link or evidence connecting the "Koshti" entries cited by the vigilance cell to the petitioners' genealogy.

Advocate R. S. Parsodkar, appearing for the petitioners, argued that his clients hold very old pre-Independence documents dating from 1912. Birth records exist for their great-grandfather "Radho" and grandfather "Vasudev". Revenue and municipal tax assessment documents of 1912, 1927, 1931 and 1937 also clearly record their caste as "Halba".

The High Court quashed the Amravati caste scrutiny committee's order of July 29, 2017. It declared that Prakash Parate and Pragati Parate belong to the Halba Scheduled Tribe. The committee has been strictly directed to issue the caste validity certificates to the petitioners within six weeks of receiving the judgment. Advocate S. V. Narle appeared for the government.

Citing historical references such as gazetteers and a book by R. V. Russell, the judges said that in earlier times some members of the Halba community took up weaving. The possibility that they were called "Koshti" in some places therefore could not be ruled out. The court also reiterated that the affinity test is only a secondary yardstick.