WUNA AMRUTHA RAO Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a very hotly contested writ petition and on a conservative estimate of the pleadings referred to by the learned advocates filed before me, there have been at least one dozen occasions when a considerable amount of judicial time of this court has been taken up in respect of these very skirmishes. The petitioners are a society running a Pre-University College. Briefly stated, the R-4 is a body which represents the parents/teachers. The 4th respondent contends that the petitioner is guilty of various acts of misconduct, the most important of them being that the members of the teaching staff are alleged to have been harassed in various forms. It is true that on the one hand, there were various acts of mismanagement and oh the other hand these aggressive tactics were adopted in order to harass and blackmail the teachers. There are counter allegations against the teachers wherein it is contended that the misconduct is on the part of certain members of the staff against whom action was required to be taken and that having no other ground to defend themselves that they have levelled various allegations. The unfortunate fall out of these incidents is that the institution has obviously suffered and from having five divisions, it appears to have come down to only one. There are also several litigations pending in respect of which I do not propose to make any observations because the forum before which those proceedings are pending will pass appropriate orders.

(2.) AS far as the present proceeding is concerned, pursuant to directions issued by this Court in the last writ petition, the director was required to hold an enquiry with regard to the allegations/charges against the petitioners. According to the petitioners, the Director sent them a questionnaire and the petitioners are supposed to have asked him for certain documents, as also a report of the Deputy Director who had visited the institution. They had also asked for copies of the complaint of the petitions that were filed against the petitioners in so far as it was their case that the department on its own accord has nothing against the petitioners but that the department is being pressurised and biased on the basis of a series of complaints levelled against the petitioners. The director is alleged to have once again called the petitioners for purposes of holding an enquiry on 17-1-1996 and on that occasion, according to the petitioners they gave a detailed reply stating that they inter alia should be furnished with the copies of the documents asked for. According to them, the Director informed them that there are about 20 other heads which he requires to examine in the course of the enquiry and they were informed that there is a questionnaire in respect of these different heads. The petitioners contend that this ought to have been made available to them and that they could not be orally subjected to an enquiry without their knowing precisely what the contents of those precise charges were. It is the petitioners case that despite having asked for the documents that the director did not furnish them to the petitioners and further more that the Director thereafter passed an order appointing a special officer. They contend therefore that the order has been passed without giving them a fair and reasonable opportunity of meeting the charges made out against them.

(3.) ON behalf of the Director, it has been pointed out to the Court that in the earlier proceeding this Court directed that the enquiry should be completed on a time-bound basis namely by 5-2-1996. The Director apparently found himself placed in a dilemma because the petitioners were indulging in all sorts of correspondence obviously with the object of dilating the proceeding and in the process time was running out and having regard to the number of litigations which the Department had faced earlier, including contempt proceedings etc. , the Director wrote to the learned Government Advocate, High Court, briefly setting out the situation and asked for guidance. Undoubtedly this was an unusual procedure and the petitioners' learned advocate has very seriously attacked this particular act on the part of the Director. Subsequently, when the copy of the enquiry report was made available to the petitioners, the letter from the director to the learned Government Advocate, High Court and the reply sent by him were both annexed to that report. Those documents are before the Court and I have perused them.