C.SANKARANARAYANAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners in these cases are school teachers, some of them employed in Government Schools, the rest in private daided schools. Their complaint is that their age of retirement on superannuation has been reduced from 58 to 55.

(2.) SO far as conditions of service are concerned, the teachers in the Government schools are governed by the gfrtvbKerala Service Rules, rules made under the proviso to Article 309 of the Constitution, while those employed in private schools are governed by the Kerala Education Rules, rules made under Section 36 read with Section 12 of the Kerala Education Act. The reduction of age, the petitioners complain of, was made with effect from 4 -5 -1967, in the first instance by an executive order, but, later, by amendments to the respective rules. We might, at the very outset, observe that the power exercised in making these rules is a legislative power so that there can hardly be any question of a violation of the principles of natural justice in the sense that the petitioners were not heard before the rules were made. Nor does it matter in the least that the age was earlier raised from 55 to 58 by an amendment of the rules, as a result, it is claimed on behalf of the private school teachers, of an understanding reached between them and the Government. The raising of the age thus effected might have been a consequence of the understanding; but it was effected not by the understanding but by statutory rule. If by such a rule, validly made, the age is lowered, it seems to us that no argument can rest on the ground that this was against the understanding that had earlier been reached.

(3.) FOR the rest, the contentions raised, namely, of discrimination and of equitable estoppel, are, we think, clearly answered by the decisions in Bishun Narain v. State of U. P., AIR 1965 SC 1567 and Srinivasan v. State of Kerala, AIR 1968 Ker 158 (FB).