MANAT KHEMRAJ SOMAJI Vs. DISTRICT PRIMARY EDUCATION OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) There are some basic values which man has cherished throughout the ages. But man looked about him and found the ways of men to be cruel and unjust and so also their laws and customs. He saw men flogged,tortured, mutilated, made slaves, and sentenced to row the galleys or to toil in the darkness of the mines or to fight in an arena with wild and hungry beasts of the jungle or to die in other ways a cruel, horrible and lingering death. He found judges to be venal and servile to those in power and the laws they administered to be capricious, changing with the whims of the ruler to suit his purpose. When, therefore, he found a system of law which did not so change, he praised it. Thus, there was neither hope nor help in man made laws or man established customs for they were one sided and oppressive, intended to benefit armed might and monied power and to subjugate the downtrodden poor and the helpless needy. If there was any help to be found or any hope to be discovered, it was only in a law based on justice or reason which transcend the laws and customs of men, a law made by someone greater and mightier than those men who made these laws and established these customs. Such a person could only be a divine being and such a law could only be 'natural law' or 'the law of nature' meaning thereby 'certain rules of conduct supposed to be so just that they are binding upon all mankind'. It was not 'the law of nature' in the sense of 'the law of the jungle' where the lion devours the lamb and the tiger feeds upon the antelope because the lion is hungry and the tiger famished but a higher law of nature or 'the natural law' where the lion and the lamb lie down together and the tiger frisks with the antelope.

(2.) If courts of law are to be replaced by administrative authorities and tribunals, as indeed, in some kinds of cases, with the proliferation of administrative law, they may have to be replaced, it is essential that administrative authorities and tribunals should accord fair and proper hearing to the persons sought to be affected by their orders and give sufficiently clear and explicit reason in support of the orders made by them. Then alone administrative authorities and tribunals exercising quasi judicial function will be able to justify their existence and carry credibility with the people by inspiring confidence in the adjudicatory process. The rule requiring reasons to be given in support of an order is, the like principle of audi alteram partem, a basic principle of natural justice which must inform every quasi judicial process and this rule must be observed in its proper spirit and mere presence of compliance with it would not satisfy the requirement of law.

(3.) It appears that even the executive authorities when taking administrative action which involves any deprivation of/or restriction on inherent fundamental rights of citizens must take care to see that the justice not only done but manifestly appears to have been done. They have a duty to proceed in a way which is free from even appearance of arbitrariness or unrneasonableness or unfairness. They have to act in a manner which is patently impartial and meets the requirements of natural justice.