PIL wants prohibited caste names removed from govt lists

Ahmedabad: A PIL in the Gujarat high court is seeking directions to the governments to remove all prohibited words for scheduled castes from government lists and websites as well as from the portal of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and replace them with the new names for these castes as suggested by the government itself.

Chirag Parmar (22), the petitioner, who is preparing for competitive exams, approached the court with the grievance that even after banning the use of certain words denoting scheduled castes, the government itself and its portals continue to use those words on lists of castes and communities and this is humiliating for people belonging to these castes.

Parmar has maintained in his PIL that the government itself has come up with various words denoting those scheduled castes, which were described by names that are prohibited to be used. The government authorities should start using the new names and replace the old names of these scheduled castes. He cited examples of the state government portals, the UPSC portal and claimed that continuing to use the old names for identification of particular scheduled castes is the violation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

The PIL reiterates that the law prohibiting these words should be strictly implemented in the state. There are 40.74 lakh SC people in Gujarat, or nearly 6.74% of the population, and continuing the use of the old names, even on list of castes by the government itself, is an insult and humiliation to these people.

The PIL states that a complaint was made to various authorities in March 2002 for action against the officials responsible who chose to use these words on the list of castes. Repeated requests were also made to the authorities to replace these words by names chosen by the government itself such as Rohit, Rohitdas, Valmiki, Vankar etc. to these castes.

The petition also took exception to a book ‘Buddha Lila’ in which prohibited names of scheduled castes have been used. The petitioner has been demanding action against the publishers of the book.