V. Dhayalamani and K. Rajapponnu vs The Joint Director of Collegiate Education and Others

K. Chandru, J.—Aggrieved by the order of the first Respondent dated 23/7/2009, the Petitioners have come forward to file the present writ petition.

Earlier, the Petitioners had filed writ petition in W.P. No. 10449 of 2008 contending that the certificates produced by P. Sundaramoorthy, Lecturer in Commerce, S. Hemalatha, Lecturer in Chemistry, V. Maheswaran, Lecturer in Commerce and S. Kumar, Lecturer in Chemistry are bogus and therefore, action should be initiated against the persons, who secured the appointment of Lecturer in Devanga Arts College, Aruppukottai/sixth Respondent.

This Court, without going into the merits of the application, passed an order dated 19/11/2008, directing the first Respondent to enquire into the complaint and pass appropriate order.

Further, the second Petitioner had also filed W.P. No. 2175 of 2009 before this Court for the very same relief and this Court disposed of that writ petition on 2/4/2009, directing the first Respondent to conduct an enquiry on the basis of the representation made by the Petitioner and also the earlier order passed by this Court.

When these two orders of this Court were received, the first Respondent had conducted the enquiry. The two Petitioners along with other complainant appeared before the Joint Director and reiterated their own contention.

In the meanwhile, the Joint Director contacted the seventh Respondent/Madurai Kamaraj University and Vinayaka Missions University, Salem to obtain expost facto approval. It was found that the Distance Education Programme conducted by the Deemed University were approved by the Distance Education Council and expost facto approval was also obtained by them.

Madurai Kamaraj University, the impleaded seventh Respondent, is the competent authority to recognise the degrees obtained by a Teacher, who was to serve in a private College. The said University had granted approval accepting the qualification as eligible for holding the post of Lecturer in the respective subject. The Additional Superintendent of Police, Virudhunagar had also made an enquiry from the University that M. Phil certificates produced by the affected parties including the second Respondent Sundaramoorthy were genuine, as per the statement given by the Registrar, Madurai Kamaraj University. The first Respondent has granted approval for those four persons for holding the post of Lecturer in the sixth Respondent College and they are also getting salary from the Government since their College is covered by the grant-in-aid Code. The Petitioners not satisfied with the impugned order dated 23/7/2009 has once again come forward with the present writ petition.

In that writ petition, he has not even cared to implead the affected parties. However, Sundamoorthy and three others have got themselves impleaded in M.P. No. 2 of 2009. The College Management which has also got impleaded in M.P. No. 3 of 2009. In their affidavit, they had stated that they were also not impleaded in the original writ petition.

It is not clear as to how the Petitioners can maintain such a writ petition which are in the nature of "Public Interest Litigation". The Supreme Court has consistently held that no third party interference can be made in service matters and public interest litigation cannot be permitted by the Court. In this context, it would be necessary to cite a judgment of the Supreme Court in Neetu Vs. State of Punjab and Others, and the relevant passage is usefully extracted hereunder:

5 ....

As noted supra, a time has come to weed out the petitions, which though titled as public interest litigations are in essence something else. It is shocking to note that Courts are flooded with a large number of so-called public interest litigations where even a minuscule percentage can legitimately be called public interest litigations. Though the parameters of public interest litigation have been indicated by this Court in a large number of cases, yet unmindful of the real intentions and objectives, courts are entertaining such petitions and wasting valuable judicial time which, as noted above, could be otherwise utilised for disposal of genuine cases. Though in Duryodhan Sahu (Dr) v. Jitendra Kumar Mishra this Court held that in service matters PI Ls should not be entertained, the inflow of so-called PI Ls involving service matters continues unabated in the courts and strangely are entertained. The least the High Courts could do is to throw them out on the basis of the said decision. The other interesting aspect is that in the PI Ls, official documents are being annexed without even indicating as to how the Petitioner came to possess them. In one case, it was noticed that an interesting answer was given as to its possession. It was stated that a packet was lying on the road and when out of curiosity the Petitioner opened it, he found copies of the official pleas are taken to explain possession, the Courts should do well not only to dismiss the petitions but also to impose exemplary costs. It would be desirable for the Courts to filter out the frivolous petitions and dismiss them with costs as aforestated so that the message goes in the right direction that petitions filed with oblique motive do not have the approval of the Courts.

Further, the Petitioners were successful in the first round and the Court had without testing the locus standi of the Petitioner, directed the first Respondent to conduct an enquiry which the first Respondent has duly conducted and found that all the stake holders have approved the qualification of the affected teachers.

In the light of the same and in the light of the precedent referred to above, the contention made by the

12 Accordingly, the writ petition stands dismissed with a cost of Rs. 5,000/-(Rupees five thousand only) to be paid to all the affected teachers (R.. Since only one teacher P. Sundaramoorthy is a party to this writ petition, the same should be paid to him.