Pre-Independence Caste Records Trump Affinity Test — ‘Documentary Proof Cannot Be Disbelieved on Presumptions’: Supreme Court Upheld Caste Validity

“Migration and modernisation may erase traditional traits — Affinity test is not a litmus test”, Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark judgment, setting aside the rejection of a Scheduled Tribe claim by both the Maharashtra Scrutiny Committee and the Bombay High Court. The three-judge Bench, headed by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai with Justices Satish Chandra Sharma and K. Vinod Chandran, ruled that credible pre-Independence documents hold greater probative value in caste verification and cannot be discarded merely on suspicion or assumptions.

The case revolved around the appellant’s claim of belonging to the “Koli Mahadev” Scheduled Tribe. Central to his case was a 1943 Zilla Parishad school admission record of his grandfather, which recorded the caste as “Koli Mahadev”. The Committee had invalidated the claim, doubting the authenticity of the record and relying heavily on the fact that the appellant failed the affinity test. The High Court had upheld that view, describing the family’s school records as unreliable.

Chief Justice Gavai, examining the 1943 entry “with a magnifying glass”, concluded that “the words ‘Koli Mahadev’ are in the same ink and in the same handwriting. Therefore, there could be no scope for interpolation in the said entry.” The Court noted that the entry was further corroborated by the school records of the appellant’s father and uncle, both pre-dating any validation disputes.

In rejecting the High Court’s reasoning, the Bench relied on the principles in Anand v. Committee for Scrutiny & Verification of Tribe Claims, where it was held that “greater reliance may be placed on pre-Independence documents because they furnish a higher degree of probative value to the declaration of status of a caste, as compared to post-Independence documents.” The Court cautioned that the affinity test, while useful to corroborate documents, could no longer be regarded as decisive: “With migration, modernisation and contact with other communities, these communities tend to develop and adopt new traits which may not essentially match with the traditional characteristics of the tribe.”

The judgment reiterated that the absence of traditional customs, rituals, or ethnological traits cannot by itself disqualify a person from being recognised as a Scheduled Tribe member if credible documentary proof exists. Referring to its own recent decision in Maharashtra Adiwasi Thakur Jamat Swarakshan Samiti v. State of Maharashtra, the Court emphasised: “The affinity test is not a litmus test to decide the caste claim and is not an essential part in the process of determination of correctness of a caste or tribe claim in every case.”

Finding that the rejection of the appellant’s claim rested on “presumptions and assumptions” rather than legal proof, the Court quashed the orders of both the High Court and the Scrutiny Committee. It held: “In view of the pre-Independence document which certifies that the appellant’s grandfather belonged to the Koli Mahadev Tribe, greater probative value ought to have been given to the said document.”

The appeal was allowed, and the Scrutiny Committee was directed to issue the caste validity certificate within six weeks.

Date of Decision: 12 August 2025