The court has no power to declare synonyms as equivalent to the tribes specified in the Schedule
A curious matter was that of Bihar’s Nityanand Sharma, stemming from what the apex court considered a wrong translation. Sharma, an assistant teacher in state service, sought promotion under ST reservation, saying his caste, Lohar, was a recognised scheduled tribe in Bihar. On being denied, he moved the high court, which dismissed his plea on August 12, 1993.
The case reached the Supreme Court based on a two-pronged premise — that the Lohars were a ST as mentioned in the Hindi version of the Schedule and the precedent set by the court in Shambhu Nath versus State of Bihar, 1990.
The state counsel, however, brought to attention the fact that while the Act mentions the Lohara/Lohra as Scheduled Tribes in both, its English and Hindi versions, Lohar is mentioned as ST solely in the Hindi version, a result of wrong translation.
On February 2, 1996, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, saying the court has no power to declare synonyms as equivalent to the tribes specified in the Schedule, or include or substitute any tribe. It said, “… As evidenced from the translated version, the community Lohar came to be wrongly translated for the word ‘Lohra’ or ‘Lohara’ and shown to have been included in the Schedule…”
