Case: Regina Vs. St. Aloysius Higher Elementary School &amp; Anr

1. Prior to June 1, 1955, the appellant was working as the Head Mistress in the respondent school. On April 22, 1955, the management of the School served certain charges on her and called upon her to reply to the same. Her reply was found to be unsatisfactory, and thereupon, by an order passed by the management on June 1, 1955 she was reduced to the position of an Assistant Teacher. She thereafter filed an appeal against the management before the District Educational Officer, South Kanara. Her appeal was rejected. A further appeal by her before the Divisional Inspector of Schools, Coimbatore, succeeded and the Divisional Inspector directed the management to restore her to her original position as the Head Mistress. The Management declined to do so and she filed the suit from which this appeal arises.2. The suit was on the basis that since the school had obtained recognition andunder the Madras Elementary Education Act, VIII of 1920, and the rules made therefor by the Government, it was under the supervision first of the Education Department of the Madras Government and after reorganization of States, that of the Mysore Government. According to her, the Act and the said rules were binding on the school and gave her a right to enforce against the management the said order of the Divisional Inspector. The order reducing her to the position of an assistant teacher stood vacated by the order of the Divisional Inspector and the respondent school, therefore, was bound to comply with that order and restore her to the position of the Head Mistress. The management contested the suit, maintaining that the order of reduction passed by it was within its power, that there was nothing in the Act or the rules which warranted nay interference with its right of internal management of the school and gave no right to the appellant to enforce in a court of law the order passed by the Divisional Inspector, that order being only a matter between the Education Department and the management.3. The Trial Court accepted the schools contention and dismissed the suit. In an appeal against that dismissal, the District Judge took a different view and held that the order of the Department was legally enforceable by the appellant since it was passed in an appeal provided by the said rules. He set aside the dismissal of the suit and passed a decree in favour of the appellant. On a second appeal by the school, the High Court went into the legislative history of the Act and on an examination of the rules accepted the contention of the management that the relationship between the parties was that of master and servant and no mandatory injunction could be issued directing restoration of the appellant as the Head Mistress as that would be tantamount to specific performance of a contract of personal service not permissible under S. 21 (b) of the Specific Relief Act, 1877. The High Court also held that the rules, under which the appellant had filed the said appeal and the said order was made, were only administrative instructions by the Government to its educational officers and not statutory rules which would give rise to a remedy enforceable at law at the instance of an employee of a school aggrieved against its management. Against this judgment, the appellant obtained special leave from this Court and filed this appeal.

Court's reasoning:
12. Ordinarily, the relations between the management of an elementary school and the teachers employed in it would be governed by the terms of the contract of employment and the law of master and servant in the absence of any statute controlling or abrogating such a contract of employment and providing to the contrary. The mere fact that such a school has obtained recognition and aid from the education department would not mean that the relationship between its management and its employees has ceased to be governed by the contracts of employment under which the employees are recruited and by the law of master and servant unless there is some provision in the Act overriding that law as one finds in statutes dealing with industrial disputes and similar other matters. There is in fact no such provision in the Act and none was pointed out to us. The result is that the relations between the management and the teachers even in a recognised elementary school have to be regarded as being governed by the contracts of employment and the terms and conditions contained therein. Part II Rules, which cannot be regarded as having the status of statutory rules made under S. 56, cannot be said to have the effect of controlling the relations between the management of a school and its teachers or the terms and conditions of employment of such teachers or abrogating the law of master and servant which ordinarily would govern those relations.13. But it cannot also be gainsaid that as the Govt. has the power, to admit schools to recognition andit can, de hors the Act, lay down conditions under which it would grant recognition and aid. To achieve uniformity and certainty in the exercise of such executive power and to avoid discrimination, the Government would have to frame rules which, however, would be in the form of administrative instructions to its officers dealing with the matters of recognition and aid. If such rules were to lay down conditions, the Government can insist that satisfaction of such conditions would be condition precedent to obtaining recognition and aid and that a breach orof such conditions would entail either the denial or withdrawal of recognition and aid. The management of a school, therefore, would commit a breach orof the conditions laid down in the rules on pain of deprivation of recognition and aid. The rules thus govern the terms on which the Government would grant recognition and aid and the Government can enforce these rules upon the management. But the enforcement of such rules is a matter between the Government and the management, and a third party, such as a teacher aggrieved by same order of the management, cannot derive from the rules any enforceable right against the management on the ground of a breach orof any of the rules. To illustrate the point, suppose the management of a school were to terminate the service of a teacher after giving one months notice, or one months salary in lieu thereof in accordance with the contract of employment between the teacher and the management, such a termination would be valid. But the Government can insist that since its rules provide for three months notice, the management cannot terminate the service of a teacher by giving only one months notice. Though, in the absence of a statutory provision having the effect of controlling or superseding the contract of employment agreed to between the parties, the termination would in law be valid, nevertheless, the Government can withdraw, under Part II Rules, the recognition and aid it has given to the school since its rules governing recognition and aid were not complied with. But that does not mean that Part II Rules confer upon a third party, viz., an aggrieved employee of a school, any remedy enforceable at law in the event of the management of an elementary school refusing to comply with these rules which, inter alia, enjoin upon a school to abide by the directions given thereunder by the education officers of the Government named therein.14. In the absence of any provision in the Act governing the relations between the management and a teacher employed by it or controlling the terms of employment of such a teacher and Part II Rules not being statutory rules, the appellant could not be said to have had a cause of action for enforcing the directions given by the Divisional Inspector to restore her as the Head Mistress in the appeal filed by her. Appeals against orders passed by the management against a teacher are provided for under R. 13 so as to enforce the satisfaction of conditions under which recognition and aid would be granted or withdrawn, and not for regulating, as between the teacher and the management, the relations of master and servant arising under the contract of employment.15. In AIR 1958 Ker 290   the Kerala High Court had to consider the question of these rules being statutory or not as one of the schools, whose writ petition among others it was trying, was governed by the Madras Elementary Education Act, 1920 and the rules made by the Madras Government. After tracing the legislative history of the Act, as also of the rules, the High Court held that Part II Rules did not have any statutory origin, and were, therefore, only administrative instructions by the Government to its educational officers, and therefore, did not vest in the school any statutory right forThis decision was later approved by a full bench of that High Court in Chandrasekharan Nair v. Secy. to Govt. of Kerala, AIR 1961 Ker 303   (FB) where that Court once again held that Part II Rules were administrative rules. Similarly, in Ramaswami Ayyangar v. State of Madras,Mad LJ 269 = (AIR 1962 Mad 389  ) the High Court of Madras negatived the contention that these rules, dealing with recognition and aid, could be invoked by an employee against the management of a private elementary school to enforce a right allegedly arising under the rules. The High Court held that the rules were not statutory rules, and that therefore, they could not enlarge the scope of the contract of employment between such an employee of the school and the management embodied in the school register, and that the rules affected the relations between the school and the Government, and not a third party. In Govindaswami v. State of Andhra,Andh WR 263 a learned Single Judge of the Andhra High Court, took the view that the powers and functions of the States educational officers under these rules in relation to recognition and aid were quasi judicial and held that these rules were statutory rules. But this view was on an assumption that even Part II. Rules were made under S. 56 (2) (h) of the Act, such an assumption was made without any enquiry whether they were so made and without taking into account the fact of the deletion of Chs. II and IV from the Act in 1939, and its impact on thepower of the Government, theof the rules thereafter and the distinction made by the Madras Government itself between Part I and Part II Rules in the headings which it gave to those two parts. The mere recent view of the Andhra High Court, however, is reflected in Moss v. Management of St. Patritcks High School Secunderabad (1970) 2 Andh WR 157 where a Division Bench of that High Court had held that Part II Rules relating to recognition and aid are not statutory rules but are only executive instructions, and therefore, are not legally enforceable in a Court of law.