CHENNAI: The Madras High Court recently refused to interfere with the order of a scrutiny committee that cancelled the scheduled tribe (ST) certificate of a retired government employee and said that any misuse of the reservation should not go unpunished.
The Division Bench of justices VM Velumani and R Hemalatha negated the contention of the petitioner that more than four decades have passed and therefore the impugned order of the State Level Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) of the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department becomes time-barred.
Dismissing the petition of the staff concerned on March 10, the bench added, “This is because the reservation policy as such is a matter of pride of our diversity and any exploitation or misuse, even if detected late, cannot be a justification for misuse.”
The petitioner, R Balasundaram, obtained the ST certificate by showing his caste as Konda Reddy in 1980 and joined government service as khalasi with the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding in Coimbatore in 1982.
Balasundaram was promoted as lower division clerk in 1999 and as upper division clerk in 2020 before retiring on November 30, 2021. In the meantime, Balasundaram’s community certificate was sent for verification to the SLSC in 2014 and the vigilance committee found it fake in 2018. Subsequently, the certificate was cancelled by the SLSC.