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Judgment
Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya, J
At the outset, it is noticed that the petitioner nos. 1 and 2 have challenged the same order and memo, but have espoused separate causes of action, inasmuch as the grievance of the petitioners is that their respective certificates as Scheduled Caste people have been cancelled by the said orders and consequentially the decision, annexed as Annexure P-1 to the writ petition, was taken.
Since, despite the order and memo impugned herein being common, the grant of S.C. certificates to the petitioners being individual in nature and giving rise to separate causes of action, the petitioners are directed to put in additional court fees to regularize the filing of a single application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, so that the present application can be treated to be two separate applications by the petitioners, clubbed as one.
Such additional court fees shall be deposited by the petitioners during the course of the day.
The grievance of the petitioners is primarily, as indicated above, that the decision of cancelling the S.C. certificates of the petitioners and holding that the petitioners belonged to the OBC category was based merely on a purported report filed by the District Vigilance Cell, Nadia and was apparently based on one of the relatives of the petitioners being also declared to be an OBC.
Learned counsel appearing for the petitioners argues that, since no copy of such report was made available to the petitioners, the impugned order of the Sub-Divisional Officer canceling the S.C. Certificate in favour of the petitioners was bad in law.
Such contentions are controverted by learned counsel appearing for the respondent-authorities, who also submits that the writ petition is not maintainable in its present form, not only because separate causes of action have been espoused but also in the said writ petition, two separate orders/memos, having different implications, one canceling the S.C. Certificates of the petitioners and the other the membership of the petitioner no. 2 in respect of Sansad-16 (reserved for S.C. Candidates) was cancelled.
However, such preliminary objection cannot be entertained since the first of the objections has been taken care of by directing the petitioners to deposit additional court fees, equivalent to a separate application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, in connection with the present writ petition and in view of the second impugned memorandum dated December 13, 2019, being consequential upon the order annexed at page 17 of the present writ petition, which is primarily impugned herein.
However, on merits it is seen that the Sub-Divisional Officer, Ranaghat, Nadia considered the materials-on-record in detail and the petitioners were apparently given hearing at every stage of the decision-making process. The technical ground of not having got a copy of the concerned report cannot be raised for the first time before this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India to challenge the veracity of the order itself.
As such, W.P. No. 24137 (W) of 2019 is dismissed, thereby affirming the orders impugned herein. However, it is made clear that the petitioners would be at liberty to ask for a copy of the report of the District Vigilance Cell, Nadia, which was allegedly not supplied to the petitioners under the Right to Information Act, and to take appropriate steps to have a re-look at the matter in the event the petitioners find some discrepancy in such report.
There will be no order as to costs.
Urgent photostat certified copies of this order, if applied for, be made available to the parties upon compliance of necessary formalities.