- (1.) This is the fourth attempt made by the Lohar community to get into the status of Lohara. Lohars are, admittedly, blacksmiths, a backward community in the State of Bihar. Loharas are Scheduled Tribes in the State of Bihar.
(2.) This special leave petition arises from the judgment and order of the Patna High court, made on 10/10/1996 in LPA No. 831 of 1996. The President of India, in exercise of the power under Article 342 (1 of the Constitution read with Article 366 (25, notified the Scheduled Tribes for the State of Bihar thus: "Such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be Scheduled Tribes for the purposes of this Constitution. "thereafter, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 1976 came to be made adding to or deleting from the lists certain castes. In Entry 22 of the entries in relation to the State of Bihar, Lohara was wrongly translated as Lohra and the same was published in the State Gazette notification. That came to be rectified by a notification published by the government on 6/1/1995. In the meanwhile, there was a spate of litigation after the 1976 Amendment Act and the Lohars - a backward class - as stated earlier, claimed the status of Scheduled Tribes. When the said claims for social status of Scheduled Tribes came to be rejected, the petitioners approached the courts. While the desired social status certificates were granted by the High court in some cases, the same was refused in others. When the matter had come up for the first time, before a bench of three Judges of this court, to which one of us (K. Ramaswamy, J. ) was a member, in Shambhoo Nath v. Union of India, it was wrongly conceded by the counsel appearing for the Union of India that they were entitled to the status of Scheduled Tribes. On that premise, the order of the Administrative tribunal was set aside and direction was given to issue the certificate of Scheduled Tribes. Since the social status certificates were not issued despite direction in that regard, a writ petition under Article 32 was again filed in this court seeking a writ of mandamus directing all the authorities in the State to issue certificates in the light of the judgment passed by this court in Shambhoo Nath case. That writ petition was also dismissed by a bench of three Judges, to which one of us (K. Ramaswamy, J. ) was a member.
(3.) Later, the matter was considered in extenso in Nityanand Sharma v. State of Bihar wherein, considering the entire history of the Lohars andloharas, this court has held in paras 10, 11 and 12 that Lohars being backward class, they cannot claim the status as Lohara, which is a Scheduled Tribe and, therefore, the entitlement on that basis is unconstitutional and it was a retrograde step to get into the status of Scheduled Tribes to snatch the benefits made for the Scheduled Tribes. It was further held that all those judgments in which the High court had taken contra view are not good law, Consequently, they filed yet another writ petition in the High court claiming, on the basis of the orders issued by competent authorities, the status of Lohara. In the impugned order, the Division bench has held that in the light of the law laid by this court in Nityanand Sharma case, it was not open to the High court to go into that question and accordingly it dismissed the writ petition. The LPA filed in that behalf also came to be dismissed. Thus, this special leave petition.;