RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, March 1: Defining locals will not be an easy task for Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led UPA government amid demand by a section of people in the state to make Records of Right prepared on the basis of 1932 survey a basis to define the same.
If the Jharkhand High Court judgment delivered in 2002 is studied it has given a clear cut indication that making 1932 Khatiyan basis of being a local is not an easy task for the State government and it will have to find a middle path with due respect to the constitution of the country and sentiment of those who want to make 1932 khatiyan basis of defining locals.
The judgment was delivered by a constitution bench comprising the then Chief Justice V.K.Gupta, Gurusharan Sharma, S.J Mukhopadhaya, M.Y Eqbal and L Uraon on November 27, 2002 in a PIL (4050/2002) filed by advocate Prashant Vidyarathi, an alumnus of St Xavier’s College. The order has tied the hands of the government to consider Records of Right prepared on the basis of a 1932 survey.
“…………………………….In other words, what the aforesaid two aspects relating to the conditions meant is that the applicant’s name or his forefather’s names either should be appearing in the Record of Rights or if, for some reason it is not there, then the applicant should be certified by Five local persons to have been residing in the local area at least for the past 75-90 years. We are told at the Bar that the last survey in most of the districts conducted, based on which the Records of Rights were prepared, was in the year 1932 or thereabout. It thus on the very face of it, effectively takes away from the purview and ambit of the definition of ‘local residents’, such citizens of India at least who as on the date of commencement of the Constitution legitimately and by constitutionally permissible and prescribed means and methods became full-fledged citizens of India, (such as the persons who, because of the partition of the Country had to migrate from either West Pakistan (as it then was) or from East Pakistan (as it then was) to the territories forming part of the Dominion of India, as it then was, after independence). It is only if we uphold the aforesaid definition of ‘local residents’ that we may have to consider the legality, validity and effectiveness of the procedure prescribed, in the impugned Notifications for the issuance of the certificates by the competent Authority based on the recommendation of five persons,” 12th paragraph of the high court constitution bench observed.
In the judgment, the high court mentioned Article 16(2) of the Constitution reading “No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect of, any employment or office under the State.” Apart from this, in the judgment, it is mentioned at several places that the apex court did not consider the place of birth as a ground for giving a job.
The court observed that “it is open to the State of Jharkhand to redefine the ‘local persons’ and to re-prescribe the guidelines for determination of ‘local persons’” but also ask it to do so “taking into account the relevant history of the State, such as, reorganization as taken from time to time; emigration of persons; as taken place during the last fifty years, settlement of refugees etc..”
Before the judgment, a battle on the issue took place in the state on July 24, 2002 which claimed six lives in the state and paved the path for the ouster of first chief minister of state Babulal Marandi from his post.
