Complaints of bogus caste certificates skyrocket
NEW DELHI: On a day the Supreme Court passed a ruling to curb the misuse of SC/ST Act, the government admitted in the Parliament that it has been receiving complaints regarding people obtaining fake caste certificates to obtain the benefits that a person belonging to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe community gets.
According to data provided by the social justice ministry to the Lok Sabha, the National Commission for Scheduled castes (NCSC) alone received 22 such complaints this year. Notably, these complaints only pertain to fake SC certificates as there is a separate body to look into the matters pertaining to Scheduled Tribes.
Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Vijay Sampla told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that NCSC is investigating complaints pertaining to fake caste certificates. The minister disclosed the information in response to a question pertaining to this issue. In 2015-2016, the NCSC received 30 complaints about fake SC certificates while in 2016-2017, it dealt with 38 such complaints.
The minister also informed the lower house of Parliament that many banks and PSUs have been making such complaints to NCSC alleging, that many people tried to avail jobs on the basis of these fake certificates. The minister admitted they have received similar complaints about people obtaining fake ST certificates. However, he did not share statistics about the ST fake certificates.
From the minister’s statement, The New Indian Express learnt that in the last three years, NCSC received 147 complaints related to false caste certificate being used in PSUs and banks. Some complaints received by NCSC from PSUs also pertained to fake ST certificates. The PSUs which complained about the issue included BHEL, Punjab National Bank, GAIL, BHEL, Indian Overseas Bank, BSNL, NTPC etc.