Supreme Court issues notice to Karnataka govt on plea against High Court order excluding 'Beda Jangam’ from SC list

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Karnataka government on a plea challenging the High Court's judgment of June 30, 2025 which ordered against treating members belonging to the 'Beda Jangam’ as Scheduled Castes.

The High Court, while dealing with an individual's caste certificate dispute, has directed the State machinery to cancel the caste certificates in entirety, deny issuance of fresh certificates, terminate services, and withdraw statutory and constitutional benefits to the community.

Considering a challenge to the High Court's judgment, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta sought a response from the Karnataka government and others within four week.

The special leave petition was filed by Karnataka State Beda Jangam Samaja Samasthe, Bengaluru, representing the welfare and interest of over five lakh members of the "Beda Jangam" as Scheduled Caste across the state.

Senior advocates S Guru Krishna Kumar and Mahalakshmi Pavani and advocate Tomy Chacko appeared for the petitioner organization.

The case before the High Court arose out of a plea by one Ravindra Swamy, who claimed to belong to the Beda Jangam Schedule Caste and sought issuance of a caste certificate for electoral purposes.

The plea pointed out, his claim underwent multiple rounds of inquiry between 2016 and 2019, culminating into the Tahsildar's order in 2019 granting him a caste certificate.

The said certificate was annulled by the Deputy Commissioner by order in 2023 in purported exercise of revisional jurisdiction under Section 4-F, and the same was upheld by the division bench in the impugned judgment on June 30, 2025.

It was contended that the list before the High Court was confined to the legality of the Deputy Commissioner's jurisdiction and the validity of the individual caste certificate.

The division bench made a colossal transgression into policy decisions of the legislature and tinkered with the Presidential Order under Article 341 which was unfounded even under the exercise of extraordinary jurisdiction of the constitutional courts under Article 32 or 226 of the Constitution, the plea contended.

"Deciding a limited individual appeal into a community wide adjudication, is nothing other than judicial overreach of grave proportions,'' the plea claimed.

The adjudication by the High Court was undertaken without impleading representative bodies or considering the fundamental constitutional distinction between 'Caste' (birth-based identity under Article 341 of the Constitution) and 'Faith' (belief-based identity under Article 25 of the Constitution), the plea stated.

The petitioner organization also claimed the High Court, by answering the newly framed question in the negative, based on considerations such as vegetarianism and priestly status, has effectively excluded a section of the notified Scheduled Caste "Beda Jangam," thereby introducing religious and sociological exclusions into the Presidential Order under Article 341 which is impermissible in view of the dictum laid down by a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court in State of Maharashtra v. Milind, (2001).