NEW DELHI: Limiting the power of National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), Supreme Court has held that it is a recommendatory and advisory body and does not have the authority to pass an adjudicatory order.Abench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih said the commission can send its recommendations to a state or Centre in discharge of its functions. However, an order passed by NCSC is not binding in servicerelated matters, it clarified.“The powers entrusted to NCSC are limited in nature. Clearly, NCSC and its other compatriots under articles 338A and 338B are constitutional bodies with a socially beneficent purpose but quite apparently, the legislature has prescribed a role that is recommendatory and advisory, but certainly not adjudicatory. They are not meant to be bodies taking over adjudicatory functions,” the bench said.The court’s order could be applicable to other statutory and constitutional bodies set up for the benefit of different groups of people like women, the minorities and backward classes.
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Explaining the clause which says that the commission is empowered to “inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards of the Scheduled Castes”, the bench said, “it is therefore clear that while it has powers to requisition documents and receive evidence, it does not have the power to make an order in furtherance of that evidence.In other words, NCSC can record a factual finding and then ask the govt concerned, either the Centre or the State, to act thereupon.”It rejected NCSC’s plea that the word “safeguards” mentioned in the provision pertains to enforcement. “Such a submission is difficult to accept in view of the explicit language of the Article. It certainly does not confer adjudicatory power; at best recommendatory in nature,” the court said.Thus, the commission cannot take up the role of a court or an adjudicatory tribunal and determine the rights of parties, court added.