S. Tulasi Das vs Secretary to the President of India and Others

P. Venkatarama Reddi, J.—The petitioner who is a practicing advocate has filed this writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, purporting to be a public interest litigation. He seeks a writ to declare the proceedings relating to the appointment of the sixth respondent as the Governor of the State of A.P as unlawful, unconstitutional and contrary to the principles of democracy and public morality. He further seeks a consequential order to the first respondent to cancel the appointment.

To what extent the parameters of judicial review could be legitimately extended to the appointments of high Constitutional Offices need not be gone into in this writ petition as we are of the view that the writ petition is liable to be dismissed summarily on a short ground. We find no sufficient material or basis before the court to come to even a prima facie conclusion that the appointment of the sixth respondent is tainted for reasons founded on democratic principles or public morality which the petitioner seeks to project. Even taking the averments in the writ petition on their face value it is not at all possible to dispel the presumption that ought to be drawn that the President applied his mind and took into account all the relevant factors bearing on the appointment of the sixth respondent as Governor, the averments set out in Paragraph 3 of the affidavit are too vague and bald to fonn a basis for a triable issue on the question of the alleged involvement of the sixth respondent in the ''scam'' pertaining to Central Bank of India regarding which we are told that the investigation by the C.B.I, is going on. It is stated in the affidavit that crores of rupees of public money was swindled in the Central Bank of India "with the connivance of the Reserve Bank of India headed by Respondent No.6". It is also stated that Respondent No.6 "has been facing ''criminal proceedings'' before the High Court of Mumbai and other Courts at Bombay in a batch of writ-petitions filed by the Forum for Justice." That is all what is said in the writ petition. Apart from the fact that no details are disclosed and the averments bear the flavour of surmise rather than having their source on definite information, the facts which are clarified by the learned Advocate-General, the Standing Counsel for Central Government and the Counsel for C.B.I, demonstrate that the allegations or the surmises made by the petitioner are without any basis. It is categorically stated that no case has been registered against the sixth respondent for involvement in any offence nor any charge is pending in a Court of law. The proceedings in the writ petition filed under Article 226 and 227 of the Constitution in Mumbai High Court by one Kishore Narayan Gangole no doubt seeks a direction from the High Court to take appropriate action against Respondents 1 to 5 (Respondent No.5 is the sixth respondent in the present writ petition) for having connived and collided in keeping the Central Bank scam in abeyance for a considerable period. It appears that the High Court of Mumbai directed a status report to be filed in respect of the investigation into the Central Bank Scam. This fact by itself does not lead us anywhere. The pendency of this writ proceeding cannot be said to cast a cloud on the sixth respondent''s conduct and propriety of appointment to the High Constitutional Office, not to speak of constitutional bar. It is also brought to our notice by the learned Advocate-General on the basis of a newspaper report that interlocutory application filed in Mumbai High Court seeking an order restraining the appointment of the sixth respondent as Governor has been rejected. In any case, we are not inclined to admit the writ petition on the basis of sweeping allegations unsupported by prima facie material. The writ petition, therefore, deserves to be dismissed at the admission stage and accordingly it is dismissed.

Incidentally we may recall the observations made by the Supreme Court in S.P. Anand Vs. H.D. Deve Gowda and others, , that a person seeking to espouse a public cause owes it to the public as well as to the Court that he does not rush to the Court without undertaking a research, even if he is qualified or competent to raise the issue. The Supreme Court then observed : "It must be remembered that a good cause can be lost if petitions are filed on half-baked information without proper research." Entertainment of public interest litigation seeking to stall appointment to a high constitutional office on sweeping allegations and slender factual foundation would do more public harm than it is meant to prevent.

Before closing the case, we may mention that the petitioner at the fag end of his arguments, wanted to refer to certain facts which are not contained in the affidavit filed in the writ petition. We have therefore not permitted the petitioner to advance his arguments based on those facts. The learned Counsel then stated that if the Court desires, he will file an additional affidavit. But we do not think that this request made in the last minute should be entertained, more especially in a matter involving appointment to a high constitutional office, that too when the Counsel for the respondents concerned had no prior notice thereon.