PRAYAGRAJ, July 8 -- The Allahabad high court has said that an election tribunal does not have jurisdiction to verify or declare a caste certificate forged; hence, the genuineness of a caste certificate cannot be challenged or scrutinised in an election petition. Justice Neeraj Tiwari made this observation while dismissing an election petition filed by one Radha Charan, who had challenged the election of Vinay Prakash Gond in 2022 UP assembly elections from Ramkola legislative assembly constituency in Kushinagar district. The assembly constituency was reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates during the 2022 UP polls. According to the petitioner, Gond belonged to the Other Backward Class and had fraudulently obtained a Scheduled Caste certificate to file his nomination from the constituency reserved for SC candidates. The court, relying on the judgment in Kumari Madhuri Patil vs Addl Commissioner (1994), emphasised that specialised scrutiny committees are the exclusive expert forums, armed with fact-finding authority to determine social status claims. The court noted that the state government had constituted 3 distinct committees in a hierarchy to examine the validity of caste certificates and that these committees possess exclusive authority to validate or invalidate them. The court, in its judgment dated July 6, observed, "Therefore, it the light of facts mentioned herein above as well as judgments relied upon, now it is crystal clear that Caste Certificate issued by the competent authority neither can be challenged nor it can be scrutinized by the Election Tribunal in Election Petition "...