SHOBHA BHATNAGAR Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application under Article 226 of ihe Constitution by a private candidate for the Intermediate Examination to bo held in March, 1959 by the M. B. Board of Secondary Education. The Board has got full discretion in allowing or disallowing any private candidate to take the examination. But actually, this candidate has been refused permission to sit for the examination on the ground that she was disqualified under Reg, 5 in Chapter XIII of the statutory regulations of the Board :

(2.) JUST before the hearing, a petition was moved making fresh averments of fact, but I shall examine them towards the end. The Board is a statutory Board acting under Regulations which have been made under a statute, and as such it is amenable to this Court's direction in the event of a finding that it has committed a mistake in interpreting or applying a regulation. If, on the contrary, the interpretation put by the Board is a correct one, or at least one of two equally plausible views, this Court would not interfere by thrusting its opinion on a statutory body.

(3.) THE petitioner joined one of the approved colleges in March, 1957 in what is ealled the 1st Year or Class XI. It was the session preceding the one at the end of which is held the examination in which she wants permission to appear. She did not complete the academic year, but left in October, 1957. The reason was that her father was transferred from Gwalior. Nor could ihe petitioner join a college at the new station Mandleshwar which does not have a college at all. After about a year she sent on her application to the Board for the examination of March, 1959 and was told that she had studied in an approved college namely "kamla Raja", and failed to secure promotion to the next year, in other words, had been 'detained' in class XI, which is also called the 1st year Intermediate. After some correspondence between the petitioner's father and the Board she filed the present application, in the end of January 1959