HC says woman can take caste of mother

Scrutiny committee order set aside

The Bombay High Court recently held, a woman is entitled to claim the social status and caste of her mother as she was brought up entirely by her mother as a single parent.

A Division Bench of Justices S.S. Shukre and G.A. Sanap was hearing a petition filed by a woman challenging a report filed by the caste scrutiny committee. The court said that upon going through the vigilance report and documents, one could say that the woman was almost entirely brought up by her mother who belongs to Mahar Scheduled Caste. Her parents were married on April 25, 1993, she was born in 2002 and the parents were divorced in 2009.

The vigilance enquiry officer on making a detailed inquiry found that the father did not take care of the child. When she was admitted to school, the mother showed her caste as Mahar and her grandfather follows customs, traditions and practices prevailing in the Mahar caste.

The court noted, “The evidence shows that for all purposes the girl has grown up in a household inhabited by the Mahar caste. However, while invalidating the petitioner’s caste certificate, the scrutiny committee held that the petitioner ought to have submitted evidence from the side of her father in order to prove her claim.

The order read, “We have already held that the petitioner is entitled to claim the same social status as her mother, having been almost entirely brought up by her mother. Such a peculiar background of the petitioner discussed earlier would show that she was also subject to the same disadvantages, same neglect and same backwardness as her mother faced and therefore, the petitioner can rightfully take the caste of her mother and not her father.”

The Bench quashed and set aside the order by the caste scrutiny committee and sent it back to the committee to decide afresh within three months.