Jun 24, 2025 08:28 AM IST
Bombay HC fined Ashish Savant ₹5 lakh for a fraudulent caste certificate, invalidating his claim after a complaint during the 2024 elections.
MUMBAI: The Bombay high court imposed a ₹5 lakh penalty on Ashish Savant, sarpanch of a Nandgaon village in Raigad, for having a fraudulent caste certificate, which came to light after a complaint filed against him during the gram panchayat elections in 2024. The court said that using a fraudulent caste certificate was a constitutional fraud.
Savant’s opponent in the election, Jalindar Khaire, had filed a complaint with the Raigad District Caste Scrutiny Committee questioning Savant’s Kunbi caste status after losing the election to him. The scrutiny committee, after a detailed inquiry, passed an order calling his caste certificate fraudulent and invalidating his caste claim. Savant then approached the high court claiming he hadn’t been heard and his documents hadn’t been properly checked.
Advocate Ramesh Dube Patil, representing the scrutiny committee, said that Sawant had used a fake school leaving certificate issued in the name of his father in June 1982, to claim that he belonged to the Kunbi caste, a sub-caste in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category . However, a report from the headmaster of the Raigad Zilla Parishad School in Vithalwadi, confirmed by the police vigilance cell, said the certificate was not issued by them, and Sawant’s father did not appear in their records. Patil added that Sawant had tried to hide an admission register and a report by the Raigad Zilla Parishad School in Nandgaon in November 2023 which recorded Sawant’s caste as a Hindu Maratha. Patil added that Sawant had three opportunities to be heard but failed to appear before the scrutiny committee.
A division bench of justices Ajey Gadkari and Kamal Khata said that Sawant had attempted to take undue advantage of a caste certificate obtained through fraudulent means. They said that such actions went against the purpose of affirmative action and dismissed Sawant’s plea and asked him to pay ₹5 lakh.
