A 10-point order banning any kind of caste-based rally in the state of Uttar Pradesh has become a fresh flashpoint between the government and the opposition.
The order includes political rallies, the public display of caste names on vehicles and signboards, and the mention of caste in most police records – which essentially means anything and everything. The order was issued by state Chief Secretary Deepak Kumar to all district magistrates and police chiefs.
What does the order say?
The Uttar Pradesh government, through this new order, has now banned a range of public displays of caste identity. This includes a complete prohibition on caste-based political rallies, as they are a threat to “public order” and “national unity”.
Furthermore, reported the Indian Express, the order also bans common practice of displaying caste names, slogans and stickers on vehicles, directing authorities to challan such vehicles under the Central Motor Vehicles Act. It said that signboards or proclamations that glorify a particular caste or declare certain areas as “caste territories or estates” in public spaces, should be removed immediately.
Most significantly, the order has now mandated not to mention the caste of an accused person in any of the police records, including the first information reports (FIRs), recovery memos and arrest memos. It asked the authorities to delete the caste column for the accused from the central Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems crime portal and for the mother’s name of the accused to be recorded along with the father’s.
The caste, the order said, would only be mentioned in cases where there is a legal necessity to record the same, such as those filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
It said that the aim of the order is to “eliminate caste-based discrimination”, adding that the directive is based on a Allahabad High Court judgment delivered on September 16. Interestingly, the case was not at all related to caste discrimination, rather, it was a plea by an alleged liquor smuggler who sought to have the criminal case against him dropped.
So, what happened?
The case and Allahabad HC order
The order of the UP government is the consequence of a judgment of the Allahabad High Court in Praveen Chetri v State of UP & Another. The petitioner, Chetri, was arrested in April 2023 for allegedly smuggling illicit liquor. He later approached the High Court seeking to have the criminal proceedings against him quashed.
The case came up before Justice Vinod Diwakar. During the hearing period, he noticed that the police had recorded the caste of each of the accused – ‘Mali’, ‘Pahadi Rajput’, ‘Thakur’ and ‘Brahmin’ – in the FIR and seizure memo. The judghe called the practice “regressive” and “resistant to the idea of a progressive, transformed, developed, modern, and unified India”.
Hence, it asked the Director General of Police (DGP) of Uttar Pradesh to submit a personal affidavit justifying the “requirement and relevance of mentioning the caste of a suspect”. To this, the DGP relied mentioning caste was a long-standing practice for identification.
Justice Diwakar was not convinced of this and called it a “legal fallacy”, adding there was no need of this when modern tools like Aadhaar cards, mobile cameras and fingerprints, among others, are available.
The court, in its order, said that the caste system “poses a serious threat to secularism and, as a consequence, to the integrity of the country,” invoking Dr BR Ambedkar’s vision of a “casteless society.”
“Individuals commonly mark their cars, bikes, and sometimes homes with caste identifiers,” the judgment read, quoted the IE report. The judge further said that vehicles are adorned with caste emblems, slogans or even warnings.
In a series of directions to the state government, the Allahabad HC asked it to remove all references to caste or tribe from police forms and notice boards. It also directed the state government to immediately remove caste-based signboards from public spaces.
Several non-binding orders were also issued regarding the mention of caste on vehicles, and others- which have all found space in the new directive of the UP government.