The Bombay high court‘s Aurangabad bench has passed an interim order restraining the authorities of the colleges concerned at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Dharashiv from cancelling admission of four Scheduled Tribe (ST) students for the next five months, over non-submission of the tribe validity certificate.

The four students, all sisters from a Dharashiv-based farmer’s family who are pursuing law, science and education courses, have challenged the decision of the Joint Commissioner, Scheduled Tribe Certificate Scrutiny Committee, Aurangabad, that invalidated their tribe claim. Their petition, filed through lawyer Mohnish Thorat, is pending final decision before the high court.

On Sept 4, the state issued a government resolution (GR) providing an additional two-month period from the date of application to those students from the Scheduled Caste, De-notified Tribes, Nomadic Tribes and Other Backward Classes and Special Backward Classes, who are facing problems in submission of their caste validity certificates for engineering, medical and other professional courses, to submit the same and get their admissions confirmed.

The overall period works out to six months for the 2025-26 admission season, but the GR made no mention about the ST category students. The petitioners brought this to the notice of the court.

The bench of Justice R G Avachat and Justice Abasaheb Shinde took an exception to such exclusion and observed, “We fail to understand why the State Government has singled out the Scheduled Tribe category.”

“It appears that only the students of the Scheduled Tribe category have been singled out, and the reason thereof has not been given in the Government Resolution itself. The petitioners before us belong to the Scheduled Tribe and are therefore unable to have recourse to the said Government Resolution,” the bench noted.

The HC said, “When the students of all other reserved castes and communities have been given the benefit of submitting caste validity certificates within a time frame of six months from the date of admission, we fail to understand why the State Government has singled out the Scheduled Tribe category.”

“Since students of all other categories are being protected from the consequence of non-submission of caste validity certificates for a period of six months, similar benefit needs to be extended to students belonging to the Scheduled Tribe, since there is no reason as to why there should be a differential classification between Scheduled Tribe students on one hand and other reserved category students on the other,” the bench said.

On the state’s submission that a Supreme Court ruling has disapproved of protecting admissions without validity certificates, the bench said that it was conscious about the same but the GR in the instant case appeared to be an “attempt to overcome the directions of the Apex Court.”

The HC also allowed the petitioners to amend their plea and instructed assistant govt pleader K. B. Patil Bharaswadkar to submit revenue records of the petitioners’ ancestral land situated in Dharashiv, for Fasli years 1338, 1343, 1358, and 1952, along with authentic translations, by Nov 24 when the matter is slated for next hearing. “The petitioners shall not seek an adjournment on any ground on the next date,” the bench said.