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Synopsis

The Supreme Court has expressed doubt over its 1998 judgment, which had held that a PIL is not at all maintainable in service matters.

A bench of Justice Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta dismissed special leave petitions filed by Pratap Singh Bist and others against the Delhi High Court's judgments of November 11, 2022 and February 14, 2023.

The court, however, expressed its reservation with the high court's finding that the PIL was not maintainable in service matters.

The petitioners had questioned the validity of appointments of teachers in the Directorate of Education in Delhi in 2008.

The division bench of the High Court at Delhi had on November 22, 2022 followed by the order passed in Review Petition on February 14, 2023, had declined to interfere with the selection and appointments made in the year 2008.

The appointments were challenged by the petitioner purportedly in public interest by way of a writ petition instituted in the year 2017. 

Upon consideration of the affidavit filed by the official respondents, the high court had come to a categorical conclusion that the private respondents possessed the requisite qualifications and all of them were eligible for the offered posts at the time of their appointment.

"In this view of the matter and having regard to the fact that the respondent nos 5 to 17 have already served for almost 15 years, we are not inclined to entertain these special leave petitions against their selection or appointment," the bench said.

However, the bench said that the second reason assigned by the high court, namely, that “PIL is not at all maintainable in service matters” in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in 'Dr Duryodhan Sahu and Others vs Jintendra Kumar Mishra and Others', (1998) "is a debatable issue and the said question of law is kept open, to be gone into an appropriate case".

Case Title: Pratap Singh Bist Vs The Director of the Directorate of Education, Govt of NCT of Delhi & Ors