Forging of caste certificate: Supreme Court dismisses Congress MLA's plea against refusal to quash criminal case

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has come down heavily upon Congress MLA G Manjunath for abusing the process of law as it dismissed his plea against the Karnataka High Court's December 12, 2024 judgment refusing to quash a criminal case lodged against him for allegedly forging caste certificate to claim that he belonged to ‘Budaga Jangama’ caste.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Alok Aradhe noted the petitioner led this court to believe that his writ appeal against the decision of the district caste verification committee, which rejected his claim of belonging to ‘Budaga Jangama’ caste, was pending before the division bench of the High Court and during its pendency, the single judge dealing with the quash petition had decided the case without waiting for the outcome thereof.

On April 1, 2025, the court stayed the HC's December 12, 2024, order and asked the division bench to decide his writ appeal. When the matter was listed before the HC's division bench on May 2, 2025, the counsel for the appellant stated that he has lost his file.

The division bench also found the registry has notified 19 objections in the writ appeal. When the matter was again listed on November 25, 2025, none appeared on behalf of the appellant.

After going through HC's orders, the apex court's bench on December 5, 2025 said, "The petitioner did not even take steps in the said writ appeal to cure the defects therein or at least appear before the division bench when the matter was listed. This conduct on the part of the petitioner amounts to clear abuse of the process which cannot be condoned.''

The apex court dismissed his special leave petition on this short ground, after hearing senior advocate S Nagamuthu for the petitioner, Karnataka's Additional Advocate General Avishkar Singhvi and C Jagadish and advocate Balaji Srinivasan for Amaresh, who contested 2013 Assembly election against the petitioner from Mulbagal (SC) constituency.

The FIR against Manjunath, sitting MLA from Kolar was in 2018 for offences under Sections 197, 198, 420, 468, 471 IPC and Section 3(1)(q) of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

It was alleged that the petitioner, with a deliberate and calculated intent to unlawfully usurp constitutional benefits reserved exclusively for members of the Scheduled Castes, forged and fabricated a caste certificate to falsely project himself as belonging to the 'Budaga Jangama' community, a notified Scheduled Caste.

However, it was further alleged that all contemporaneous records—including his school transfer certificate and official entries—unequivocally established that he belonged to the 'Byragi' community (Category–I of the Other Backwards Classes) and not to any Scheduled Caste.