The High Court of Karnataka has imposed a cost of ₹2 lakh on the chairman and members of the Hassan district caste verification committee for making a candidate selected for a government job run from pillar to post for a year for validation of her caste and income certificates, refusing to validate them, contrary to the law, and approving them only when court intervened.

“It is a case where the members of the committee must be mulcted with exemplary cost. The chairman and the members who have deliberately ignored the law, as a result of which the petitioner is driven to unnecessary litigation and a consequential loss of 12 months of her employment, shall bear the costs,” the court observed.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition filed by Muthulakshmi B.N. of Channarayapatna in Hassan district.

The petitioner was selected for the post of Assistant Public Prosecutor under Category 3A in January 2023, and she was asked to upload images of all her original certificates on a government portal in May 2023 for verification before issuance of the appointment order.

However, the committee, headed by the then Deputy Commissioner of Hassan district, refused to validate her income certificate on obtaining a report from the verification officer who had said that the income of her husband exceeds the limit.

Following this, the petitioner moved from pillar to post, approaching various State authorities, pointing out that the income certificate is based on her father’s income and not that of the husband as per law, which was a settled principle by the courts. She finally knocked the doors of the High Court in March 2024, challenging the action of the committee.

When the court in April 2024 questioned the conduct of the committee for failing to consider the income of father as per the law laid down by the apex court, the committee issued validity certificate with a remark that the “validity certificate is issued only based on the court’s direction even though income of her husband exceeds the limit”.

While terming the committee’s remarks as “not only ignorance of law as settled by the apex court but also an act of contumacious contempt”, the court said that the “committee’s unlawful act made the petitioner to languish in anxious limbo for 12 months when other selected candidates to the post joined the service” way back in June 2024.

The court ordered a cost of ₹2 lakh to the petitioner by the then chairman and members of the committee from their personal fund.