Mumbai: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Konkan divisional commissioner to decide on merits, uninfluenced by a recent Bombay high court order, an appeal filed by corporator Vishakha Raut against a caste scrutiny committee order that disallowed her OBC caste certificate. The Supreme Court bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandip Mehta said her seat in the BMC house should be kept vacant till her appeal is decided.Raut is a Shiv Sena (UBT) corporator and former mayor. She won the January 2026 BMC election from Ward 191 in Dadar (West).She had petitioned the Supreme Court against a September 2 high court order which had dismissed her petition challenging municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide’s request to the state government last month to declare her disqualified for six years and the government’s issuance of such a gazette notification.Raut, pleading urgency before the Supreme Court, said Bhide requested to “unseat her with retrospective effect’’ within five days of a caste scrutiny committee invalidating her caste certificate. Senior counsel Indira Jaisingh, appearing for Raut, said the “matter concerns the illegal, premature, and highhanded unseating and disqualification of the Petitioner from her elected public office by the Municipal Commissioner during the mandatory statutory embargo period.”There is a 90-day appeal window, and the unseating order was “in direct defiance of this statutory bar”, Jaisingh argued.For the complainant, Priya Sarvankar Gurav, who had lost the election, senior counsel K Parmeshwar argued against any relief and submitted that since the disqualification issue was under consideration and pending, no interference of the top court was needed.The Supreme Court asked Gurav’s counsel if there was a finding of the caste scrutiny committee holding that her certificate was false. Jaisingh said the finding was that she should have applied in the city and not Palghar. The committee had on August 20 cancelled her Kunbi OBC caste certificate on the grounds that the officer who had issued it had no jurisdiction to do so. Jaisingh said she thus was entitled to file an appeal which she did and which is pending and hence no question arose of disqualification at this stage.The Supreme Court said her appeal before the divisional commissioner be heard and decided on its own merits, without being influenced by the high court judgment.Gurav had also filed an election petition to challenge Raut’s victory before the small causes court. Raut, on September 8, sought rejection of the election plea. Both are pending before the small causes court.“In the absence of an immediate stay on the unseating order dated 25.08.2026, the petitioner faces imminent and catastrophic prejudice before the small causes court,’’ Raut pleaded before the Supreme Court.Before the high court on September 2, Raut’s senior counsel Surel Shah argued before a division bench of Justice Girish Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale that the municipal commissioner had no power to write and make the request to the state.Senior counsel Rajendra Pai for Gurav had argued that the communication was merely a consequential request to notify her disqualification.The Supreme Court posted Raut’s matter for hearing next on October 28.
