Jawaharlal Nehru Education Institute Public Trust and Another vs State of Gujarat and Others

Bhagwati Prasad, J.—Heard the learned Counsel for the appellants.

This appeal is arising out of the decision of the learned Single Judge of this Court in Special Civil Application No. 1893 of 1989, in which the issue, which was germane, was selection of Type Instructor with the appellant.

According to the learned Single Judge, any appointment in the Trust was subject to approval by the authority in terms of subsections (6) and (7) of Section 35 of the Gujarat Secondary Education Act, 1972. According to the learned Single Judge, such approval was not there and the respondent authorities have refused to accord the sanction, vide letter dated 27.2.1989, to selection which was held on 20.1.1989. The learned Single Judge has accepted the reasonings given in Annexure-''A''- letter dated 27.2.1989 for not according the sanction and accordingly, dismissed the Special Civil Application filed by the petitioner Trust.

The learned Counsel for the appellant Trust emphasized that the refusal to grant sanction was by unreasoned order. The reasons given are unsustainable and on such vague and unsustainable reasons, an appointment which was made by duly constituted Selection Committee, cannot be denied.

In the instant case, the incumbent, who has been selected, is daughter-in-law of the Managing Trustee of the appellant and who opted out of the Selection Committee before the selection proceeded and informed every other members that this candidate is his daughter-in-law, therefore, he is not participating in the selection process. With this, the learned Counsel emphasized that the Managing Trustee informed every body that the candidate is daughter-in-law of his family and, therefore, he is not in the selection process and therefore, it cannot be said that the selection was affected by bias.

The learned Counsel further emphasized that the selection, which took place on 20.1.1989, was not approved within 15 days of time as envisaged under Sub-section (6) of Section 35 of the said Act and, therefore, a complaint was made to the higher authorities and subsequently, when the higher authorities pressurized the District Education Officer, he had not accorded the sanction and held against the appellant.

The learned Counsel informs us that, in all, there were three candidates appointed. Two of them were approved and third one was not approved, giving reasons, which according to the learned Counsel for the appellants, are not appropriate.

We have given our thoughtful consideration to the arguments raised and have perused the record. We find that the experience certificate, which has been produced by the incumbent before the authority is by one private type institute, which though says that it is Government Approved. The qualification required for appointment was to the tune that there should be experience certificate of an educational Institute for one year. The learned Single Judge has doubted this experience certificate. In our view, rightly so, because any educational Institute cannot be compared with private Type Institute and experience certificate issued by such private Institute cannot be equated with the required experience of the office for teaching. Therefore, the grounds given by the respondent authorities for not according sanction to the appointment appears to be rational on the ground that the candidate selected was not holding the required qualification.

We have considered the arguments of the learned Counsel that since the complaint was made against the authority, therefore, sanction was not granted. We are afraid that this is only a conjecture. Out of three, two were given approval and the approval was not given to the appointment of the appellant. This was only on account of the allegation which was levelled by the petitioner against the sanctioning authorities to the higher authority that the appointment was not sanctioned. There being direct nexus in between the Managing Trustee and the appointed officer and the experience certificate being not genuine, as held by the learned Single Judge, we do not see any illegality being committed by the authorities concerned in not according the sanction. We do not see that the consideration given by the learned Single Judge in rejecting the petition is vitiated on account of the arguments raised by the learned Counsel for the appellants.

In view of the above, we do not see any merit in the appeal. The appeal is accordingly dismissed.