The Madras High Court has recently held in the case of S. Paul Raj v. The Tahsildar, MetturThaluk&Anr.that a person is not entitled to claim an 'inter-caste marriage' certificate on the pretext of his community certificate when he originally belonged to a certain caste but received a different community certificate on account of conversion to another religion.Justice S.M. Subramaniam observed that conversion does not alter a person's caste, and the said aspect cannot be suppressed to grant an inter-castmarriage certificate on the basis of his current community certificate.
The Court relied on the apex court judgment in SoosaiEtc v. Union of India & Others, 1986 AIR 733, where it was mentioned that Scheduled Castes is defined in Clause 24 of Article 366 of Constitution as those cases encapsulated under Article 341 of the Constitution. In the High Court order, a relevant paragraph from the judgment is also extracted, which mentions that the caste system is a feature of the Hindu Social structure, peculiar to Hindu Society. Such demarcation based on vocation later moulded into a structural hierarchy and then stratification that determined the status of an individual bybirth.
Thus, except for the cases falling under the categories stated in the Government Order, no other couples are entitled to get inter-caste marriage certificates. Accordingly, the Court dismissed the writ petition, stating that there is no infirmity in the order refusing inter-caste marriage certificates.
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