IN THE HIGH COURT OF HIMACHAL PRADESH, SHIMLA CWP Nos. 674 and 1116 of 2009 Reserved on.: 10.08.2009 Date of decision: 24.08.2009 CWP No. 674 of 2009 Naresh Kumar …Petitioner Versus State of H.P and others. Respondents. CWP No. 1116 of 2009 Rakesh Mehta …Petitioner Versus State of H.P and others. Respondents. Coram The Hon’ble Mr.Justice Deepak Gupta, J. The Hon’ble Mr. Justice Surinder Singh, J. Whether approved for reporting?1 No. CWP No. 674 of 2009 For the petitioner: Mr. Ramesh Sharma, Advocate. For the respondents: Mr. Ram Murti Bisht and Rajesh Mandhotra, No. 1 to 4. Deputy Advocate General. For the respondent No.5 Mr. Rakesh Dogra, Advocate. For the respondent No.6. Mr. Neeraj Kumar, Advocate. For the respondent No.7 Mr. Dalip Kumar Sharma, Advocate. For the respondent No.8 Mr. P.P.Chauhan, Advocate. CWP No. 1116 of 2009 For the petitioner: Mr. P.P.Chauhan, Advocate. For the respondents Mr. Ram Murti Bisht and Rajesh Mandhotra, No 1 to 4. Deputy Advocate General. For the respondent No.6. Mr. Ramesh Sharma, Advocate. 1 Whether the reporters of the local papers may be allowed to see the Judgment? Yes. 2 Per Deepak Gupta, J. The aforesaid two writ petitions are being disposed of by a common judgement since the questions involved in both the petitions are the same. In the State of Himachal Pradesh under the H.P. Education Code, 2001 there is a provision for constitution of Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs). The objective of forming these PTAs is to create a healthy environment in the schools, maintain proper relationship between the parents and the teachers and in nut-shell to ensure that the students are provided proper education. In case, teachers are not appointed to the schools the PTA is authorized to make appointments of teachers to the schools as a stop gap arrangement till regular hands are appointed. The State has also framed the Grant-in-Aid Rules in the year 2006. It provides that the grant shall be limited to the number of posts in the subject which are vacant in the education institutions. The grant-in-aid will only be provided in case a duly qualified teacher is appointed by the PTA. The Rules also lay down what is the maximum quantum of grant-in-aid, etc. All over the State of H.P. a large number of teachers are appointed by the PTAs. It would also be pertinent to mention that hundreds of appointments of PTA teachers were challenged before the erstwhile State Administrative Tribunal as well as this Court. It was held that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to entertain such a dispute. A large number of writ petitions relating to PTA Teachers were pending before this Court. Therefore, the State decided to constitute certain Committees to look into the matter and decide the question as to whether the appointments made by the Parents Teachers 3 Association were on the basis of merit or not. Notification constituting the committees to inquire into the cases of irregularly appointed teachers by the Parents Teachers Association was issued on 19th April, 2008. In the present case, PTA of Govt. Senior Secondary School, Ghoond, Tehsil Theog, elected Shri Pradeep Jhangta as its President in December, 2006. Applications were invited for conducting the interviews for post of Lecturers in the subjects of History, Political science, Hindi, English and Physical Education. Interviews were conducted for the post of Physical Education teacher in the month of August, 2007. Shri Madan Lal filed a civil writ petition before this Court which was numbered as CWP No.1339 of 2007 in which he laid challenge to the selections made by respondent No.6. During the pendency of the writ petition, as pointed above, the State of H.P. issued a notification on 19th April, 2008 wherein the complaints against appointments made by the PTAs could be looked into by the Committees formed under the said notification. In view of this notification CWP No.1339 of 2007 filed by Shri Madan Lal was disposed of with liberty given to him to approach the Committee. Shri Naresh Kumar thereafter filed a complaint before the Committee challenging all the appointments made by the PTA. Naresh Kumar had applied for the post of Physical Education Teacher. According to him, he came to know that this Court had decided a writ petition in which it had been held that only the parents of students studying in a school could function as President of the PTA. According to him, no child of respondent No. 6 Pradeep Jhangta was studying in the school and therefore the 4 constitution of the PTA itself was improper and all appointments made by this PTA were illegal. It would be relevant to refer to para 7 and 8 of the complaint which read as follows:- “7. That the petitioner being qualified had applied for the post of DPE in the month of October, 2006 and thereafter for the post of PET in the month of August 2007. It is pertinent to mention here that the petitioner learnt from the newspaper that the President of the PTA can only be elected amongst the parents of the students of the concerned school and if the President is not parent of any student then he cannot conduct any interview etc. The petitioner collected the copy of judgement passed by the Hon’ble High Court of H.P. through his friends and submitted the same to respondent No.8 on 30.7.2007 by a covering letter which was received by the respondent No.7. 8. That after supplying the copy of the said judgement the petitioner remained under the impression that till the new PTA is constituted or elected, the interviews for the post of PET cannot be conducted by the present PTA since the respondent No.8 was not elected in accordance with the Rules and the said judgement as he was not the parent of any student of the school.” The Committee only considered the question of Physical Education Teacher and passed a cursory order which reads as follows:- “the desired record summoned and simultaneously, the complainant concerned in person. The Principal and subject Specialist called upon the said date. As per the above facts, the committee comes to the conclusion that as per the record available from the school Annexure prepared which shows that PTA ignored the merit. Hence selection made by PTA Committee is rejected. Name of Naresh Kumar is recommended.” Against this order, Shri Rakesh Mehta, the selected candidate, filed CWP No. 2355 of 2008 in this Court which was disposed of by holding that alternative remedy of approaching the Appellate Authority was available to him. Thereafter, Shri Rakesh Mehta filed an appeal before the Deputy Commissioner, Shimla, 5 who rightly came to the conclusion that the Committee had passed the order without giving any opportunity of hearing to Shri Rakesh Mehta and consequently, the order was set-aside and the matter was remanded to the Committee head by SDM, Theog to decide the matter afresh after giving proper opportunity of being heard to the complainant. Despite this order, Rakesh Mehta was not permitted to join in the school in question and therefore, he filed CWP No.1116 of 2009 in which an interim order was passed on 10th April, 2009 directing that the petitioner be permitted to join. CWP 674 of 2009 has been filed by Shri Naresh Kumar and his grievance is that the Committee has not at all inquired into the complaint of the petitioner and he raised another additional plea that not only was the PTA improperly constituted but this improperly constituted PTA headed by Shri Pradeep Jhangta had appointed Smt. Subhadra Jhangta as lecturer. He urged that Subhadra Jhangta had been appointed Lecturer in the school by her brother-in-law and this action was illegal and liable to be set- aside. In reply filed by Subhadra Jhangta no reply was given to the allegation that she is the ‘Bhabhi’ of the President of the PTA. We had, therefore, directed her to file a fresh affidavit on 30th July, 2009 disclosing her exact relationship with the President of the PTA Shri Pradeep Jhangta. She has admitted that her husband is the real brother of Pradeep Jhangta. At the outset we may observe that the petitioner before the Committee had challenged the appointments of all the persons appointed by the said Committee. His main grouse was that the PTA itself was not properly constituted. The Committee did not go into the allegations of the petitioner but only decided the question 6 on merits and held that merit had been ignored in the case of the Physical Education Teacher. We are constrained to observe that once the State had notified that it is the Committee which will decide the disputes with regard to the appointments made by the PTA’s the Committee was bound to consider all the pleas raised by the petitioner in his complaint. Furthermore, the Committee could not have decided the matter without giving notice to the persons who are likely to be affected. The Committee was bound to give notice to all the teachers including Subhadra Jhangta and Rakesh Kumar whose appointments were challenged by the petitioner. The Deputy Commissioner in our opinion rightly decided this issue. We may point out that in CWP No.58 of 2007 titled Raj Kumar Vs. State of H.P. and others, this Court had held as follows:- “We are clearly of the view that though the Education Code does provide that the parent or guardian of the child who is blood relative can be a member of the PTA, the question of a guardian becoming a Member shall only arise if either the natural parents of the child are dead or for some other reasons beyond their control are not able to took after their children. Before permitting a guardian to become a member of the PTA, it must be shown that the guardian is in fact looking after the child or that the child is residing with him. Unless it is shown that the natural parent(s) cannot lookafter the interest of the child the guardian cannot be allowed to be a member of the PTA. The petitioner has also attached Annexure P-2 a copy of the letter No.EDN-H(8)17(2)46/2006-PTA dated 19.8.2006 sent by the Director of Higher Education, Himachal Pradesh wherein it is clearly mentioned that the President of the PTA can only be a parent of the child. Therefore, even if a guardian is permitted to become a member he cannot become the President of the PTA.” Therefore, we are prima facie of the view that Shri Pradeep Jhangta could not have been elected President of the PTA. In CWP No. 921 of 2007 titled Rajender Singh vs. State of H.P. and others, the Pradhan of the PTA headed a Committee wherein his real 7 brother was selected as PTA teacher. We had set-aside this appointment and held as follows:- “In view of the admitted facts that respondents No. 5 and 6 are real brothers the selection of respondent No.6 is totally illegal and violative of the principles of natural justice. It is well established law and has been repeatedly held by the Apex Court that a selection in which one of the members of the Selection Committee is related to one of the selected candidates is hit on the principle that it attracts bias and therefore is violative of the principle of natural justice. In view of the above discussion, the selection of respondent No.6 as Lecturer Political Science in Government Senior Secondary School, Solang, Tehsil Jubbal, Distt. Shimla, H.P. is liable to be set-aside. Accordingly the selection of respondent No.6 is quashed. The respondent No.5 is directed to initiate fresh process of selection immediately. In case the respondent No.6 or any other relative of respondent No.5 applies for the post he (respondent No.5) shall immediately withdraw from the entire selection process and the selection shall be made by an Interview Committee consisting of the Principal of the School, the Subject Expert and the Secretary of the PTA.” Since the matter stands remanded to the Committee by the Deputy Commissioner, we feel that the interest of justice shall be served if we dispose of the aforesaid two writ petitions with the following directions:- 1. That the Committee shall issue notice of the complaint filed by Shri Naresh Kumar to all affected parties shown as respondents No. 1 to 9 in the complaint; 2. The Committee shall give reasonable opportunity of hearing to all these persons; 3. The Committee shall first decide the question whether Shri Pradeep Jhangta could have been appointed President of the PTA in light of the observations made by us in CWP No. 58 of 2007 quoted here-in-above; 8 4. The Committee shall also consider the question whether Shri Pradeep Jhangta could have been member of the Selection Committee where his real brother’s wife was a candidate even if she was the sole candidate in the light of the observations made in CWP No. 921 of 2007; 5. We find from the complaint that the complainant had attached the copies of the judgements delivered by this Court. We expect a Committee headed by the SDM to give due respect to the judgements of the Court and the Committee cannot lightly brush away the same; 6. Till the Committee decides the matter Shri Rakesh Mehta shall be permitted to function in the school. Thereafter, his appointment will abide by the decision of the Committee; 7. The Committee shall make every endeavour to decide the matter as early as possible and in any event not later than 30th November, 2009. In case any appeals are filed against the order of the Committee the Deputy Commissioner, Shimla shall decide the appeals latest by 31st January, 2010. 8. The parties who are represented before us are directed to appear before the SDM on 1st September, 2009. Both the writ petitions are disposed of with the aforesaid directions. No order as to costs. ( Deepak Gupta ), J. 24th August, 2009 ( Surinder Singh), J. ™