Madras High Court orders issuance of “no-caste, no-religion” certificate to three-year-old child

Justice Abdul Quddhose of the Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Ambattur Tahsildar to issue a "No Caste No Religion" certificate to a three-year-old son of the petitioner who had done an inter-caste marriage in 2015, the DT Next reported.

Court passed the order while disposing of a petition filed by J Manoj, father of the three-year-old. Manoj sought directions from the bench to Ambattur Tahsildar to issue a “No-caste, No-religion” certificate for his son to get admission to the school.

Manoj stated that he was from the scheduled caste, married a woman from a backward caste, and had a child in 2019 and when he tried to enroll in school, he was unable to fill out the column on the application form that asked for his caste.

Manoj further stated that as he wanted to raise his son in a “casteless and religion-free society”, he requested the Ambattur Tahsildar to issue a “No-caste, No-religion” certificate. Since the Tahsildar did not provide him with the same, he approached the High Court.

The counsel for Manoj submitted that even the Tamil Nadu government aims to provide for a casteless society by introducing various schemes such as the Equality Village Housing Scheme (Samathuvapuram).

He further highlighted a Government order (GO) issued by the State government in February 2021 to issue a “No-caste, No-religion” certificate.

The counsel further added that when they approached the Ambattur Tahsildar for obtaining a No Caste, No Religion certificate, the authorities stated that they were unaware of the practice of issuing such certificates.

Furthermore, the counsel, also informed the officer that Tiruppattur Tahsildar had issued a No Caste, No Religion certificate in 2019 and that a Coimbatore couple had recently obtained a similar certificate.

Taking note of the submissions, Justice Quddhose directed the Ambattur Tahsildar to issue the “No Caste, No Religion” certificate within two weeks.