RUPALI DHANANJAY PATIL Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Rule. Rule returnable forthwith.

(2.) This is yet another instance where no amount of judicial pronouncement by this Court is enough for the Government to understand that a question of law of general applicability has been decided and is binding. On the one hand, our Courts are told that there are mounting arrears of cases, increase in backlogs, matters being adjourned and indefinite delays. What is forgotten in this is that much of the filing is completely unnecessary. Petitioners are often forced to come to this Court only because the Government continues to raise the same objections and to pass the same orders again and again despite Court after Court holding as a matter of law that such orders cannot be sustained. For some reason that we are unable to understand, officers in the Government believe that the law declared by this Court is not binding on the State Government. We proposed to disabuse employees of the State Government from these notions. It was not long ago that we found the same approach was being taken by the State Government's Forest Department in regard to a decision of none other than the Supreme Court in Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and Anr. v. State of Maharashtra and Ors., (2014) 3 SCC 430. Affidavits were filed saying that that detailed Supreme Court judgment which analysed the law was limited to the facts pertaining to the parties before the Court and none other. We had to compel the State Government to reconsider its position. It did.

(3.) Now in the education field we find the same thing happening all over again with judgments of this Court. From page 39 to 106 of this Petition are copies of previous orders that have all dealt with precisely the question that is being agitated before yet again us today.