Adopted child to take caste of single mother: Bombay High Court

The Bombay High Court said that the adopted child will take the caste of single mother and authorities cannot insist on the caste certificate of father.

The Bombay High Court has directed the administration to issue a caste certificate to the adopted son of a single mother, assigning him the same caste as her.

The woman had adopted a boy from an orphanage in the Tardeo area of Mumbai. At the time of adoption, the 5-year-old boy was called Pappu and the identity of his biological parents was not known. According to procedure, the woman had applied for registration of birth in the record of the Municipal Corporation and the certificate was issued in 2010 which showed the woman as the mother.

Since the woman was from “Hindu Mahyavanshi” caste, which is a scheduled caste, she applied for issuance of boy’s caste certificate to the deputy district collector. However, the authority, in 2016 rejected the application on the grounds that documents of the caste of the boy’s father were not submitted and so the boy was not entitled to get a caste certificate.

Aggrieved by the order, she approached the District Caste Certificate Scrutiny Committee in Mumbai City, which dismissed the appeal in 2017 and confirmed the order passed by the deputy district collector.

The woman’s contention was that, since she is a single mother her adopted son would take her caste. Since he was adopted from an orphanage, neither the institution nor the woman knew about the child’s caste. So she asserted to the court that the order passed by the authorities by whom the boy was denied a caste certificate was illegal.