MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras HC has said that an order concluding that a community certificate is not genuine, can’t be sustained, unless it is shown that the procedure prescribed was followed meticulously.
Justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri stated so while granting relief to L Gunasekaran, a septuagenarian with disability, in getting his retirement benefits, which were delayed for over a decade due to community certificate cancellation.
Gunasekaran was issued a certificate, stating that he belonged to ST community named Konda Reddis, by the jurisdictional tahsildar in February 1980. Two years later, he was posted as a clerk-cum-assistant cashier in a public sector bank and worked there till his retirement in 2013.
However, inquiries were made into the genuineness of his community certificate in 1993 and 2007, and finally on July 12, 2021, the Directorate of Tribal Welfare issued a show-cause notice to him seeking an explanation within two weeks.
Though Gunasekaran received the notice only on August 4, 2021, the inquiry report was forwarded to the state-level scrutiny committee before the expiry of the period, and a day later, the committee declared Gunasekaran’s certificate ‘not genuine’.
This irregularity in procedure amounts to denial of fair opportunity to the petitioner and vitiates the entire inquiry, the bench observed, and set aside the committee’s order.