AKHILESWARA IYER Vs. COCHIN DEVASWOM BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition under Art.226 of the Constitution. The petitioner is Mr. Akhileswara Iyer, Principal of the Sree Kerala Varma College, Trichur His complaint is that he has been wrongly suspended as and from 4-12-1958 from his office as Principal by the respondent, the Cochin Devaswom Board, in whom is vested the management of the College.

(2.) The petitioner joined this institution in 1957 within a week of its inauguration as a First Grade College as Professor and Head of Department of History and Economics. He had already 19 years service in the St. Josephs College, Bangalore. In June 1951 he was appointed vice Principal of the College and later in November of that same year as the Principal. He has ever since continued in that office. The respondent Board is a body corporate and consists of three members who hold office periodically by election or nomination as the case may be. Before petitioner became principal there had been three variations in the constitution of the Board. 1 he Fourth Board which came into office in September 1958 included Messrs. K.N. Gopalan (President), Kodanad Narayanan Nambudiripad and Kumaran.

(3.) It had happened that before this last Board assumed office, there was the retrenchment of the service of A. V. Narayanan Nambudiri, Lecturer in the Malayalam and son-in law of Kodanad Narayanan Nambudiripad, Member of the Board and again the refusal to give retrospective effect to the promotion of Mr. Sathi M. Warrier, Lecturer in English. These two matters were apparently the subject of certain pending representations before the new Board and so became topics of conversation when the petitioner made his courtesy call on them on 1-10-1958. During the course of the conversation the new Board would appear to have expressed themselves clearly that the two staff members concerned had not been correctly treated by their predecessor Board and incidentally they must have given their view also that petitioner was not fit for his office as Principal. In their respective versions of what actually took place however the Board and the petitioner differed to certain extent. It is unnecessary to go into the details of these differences Anyhow the Board felt that petitioner had imputed untruth to them and thought it fit to issue notice to the petitioner to terminate his services and called upon him to submit his explanation on or before 14 -11-1958, vide .Ext. E dated 19-10-1958. While so, on 30-10-58 a checking of the College Library by the Devaswom Commissioner was set afoot for the period 1953-58 though there had been half yearly checkings already. On 4-12-1958 Ext. G notice of suspension now complained against was issued to the petitioner as follows: