HC stays FIR against BJP's Guna MP in caste certificate case

The Madhya Pradesh High Court here on Thursday stayed an FIR registered against the BJP's Guna MP K P Yadav and his son for allegedly giving wrong information to get caste certificates, their lawyer said. The police in Ashoknagar district have registered a First Information Report against Yadav and his son Sarthak for allegedly furnishing wrong information to obtain a certificate that they belonged to "non-creamy layer" in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category.

K P Yadav defeated senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year. Yadav's lawyer MPS Raghuvanshi said Justice Vishal Mishra of the Gwalior bench of High Court on Thursday stayed all the criminal proceedings in the matter.

Yadav has challenged the FIR, which was based on a report filed by Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM), Mungaoli which recommended that their caste certificates be revoked. The lawyer argued before the court that K P Yadav obtained his certificate in 2014 when he was not an MP and he did not use it to get any benefit.

An SDM has no power to revoke a caste certificate and only a state-level committee can do that, the lawyer said. Futher, the SDM gave them only one day to file their replies, he argued.

On Saturday, the Ashoknagar city police registered an FIR under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 120B (conspiracy), 181 (false statement on oath to public servant) and 182 (furnishing false information). The SDM's report alleged that K P Yadav furnished wrong information to get the non-creamy layer certificate in 2014, while his son Sarthak furnished wrong information to get a similar certificate in July this year.

The information submitted was different from the information about K P Yadav's assets in election affidavits, it said. His income in the election affidavits was higher than the slab fixed for non-creamy layer OBCs, the report said..