DHARAMPAL Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) "Whether an offer of appointment which stands withdrawn before its acceptance by a person gives rise to a right enforceable through a writ of mandamus under Articles 226 of the Constitution of India" is the prestinely legal question which comes to the fore in this set of 11 petitions (CWP Nos. 4000/86, 3466/86, 4472/86, 6613/86, 5987/86, 764/86, 6611/86, 6612/86, 5434/86, 604/87 and 6906/86). It arises in the following manner :-

(2.) What has been highlighted in these petitions is that the letters of appointment issued in favour of the petitioners were suddenly cancelled or withdrawn on 6th June, 1986, without any cause or assigning any reason therein. According to them, this was not only arbitrary but was the result of legal mala fides, as the Council of Ministers headed by Shri Bhajan Lal had "resigned on 4th June, 1986, and a new government headed by Shri Bansi Lal had come into office. It was on account of this change in the government that the offers of appointment sent to the petitioners were withdrawn at the instance of the government in order to accommodate their own men. This stand, however, has strongly been refuted by the government as well as the bank, i.e., respondent No. 3. The stand of the government is two-fold. Firstly though the new Cabinet had been sworn in on 5th June, 1986 yet Shri Piara Singh remained minister-in-charge of the Department of Cooperation in both the governments, i.e., the one headed by Shri Bhajan Lal and the new Cabinet headed by Shri Bansi Lal. As such, there was no change in the government so far as the Department of Cooperation was concerned. Secondly, the Registrar, Cooperative Societies, Haryana, had issued instructions (Annexure R1) in the light of a communication dated 1st May, 1986 from the Finance Department, to the Haryana State Cooperative Land Development Bank, i.e., respondent No. 3, directing the latter not to fill up the posts in question "without the concurrence of PE & IC (FD),- vide his letter dated 2nd June, 1986, the Registrar also requested the government in the Cooperative Department to take up the matter with the Finance Department for its concurrence to the filling up of these vacancies. While the matter was still pending it came to his notice that the bank was proceeding further in the matter of making appointments and he issued a letter on 6th June, 1986, giving directions to the Managing Director of the Bank 'not to fill up the post advertised in the National Herald dated 11th April, 1986". These directions, according to him, had no connection whatsoever with the change in the government. As a matter of fact, the Registrar had passed the above-noted order on the file on 25th May, 1986.

(3.) It deserves to be noticed here that at the initial stages when these cases come up for hearing before a learned Single Judge of this Court, it was maintained on behalf of the respondents that as the bank was only a Co-operative Society registered under the Co-operative Societies Act, and was not a 'State', it was not amenable to the writ jurisdiction of this Court in view of Article 12 of the Constitution of India. The stand of the petitioners before the learned Judge was that Society, i.e., the bank had completely been taken over by the State Government, and an official of the Government was running its affairs as a managing director, therefore, the objection raised on behalf of the respondents was totally devoid of merit. As the learned Judge felt that the controversy raised was of some consequence and was likely to effect not only the decision of these petitions but many others, which according to the learned judge, were in the pipeline, he thought it proper to refer these petitions to a large Bench for their disposal. This is how the matter is before us. Since after hearing the learned counsel for the parties for some time we formed the opinion that in case the answer to the above-noted question, as noticed in the opening part of this judgment, is against the petitioners then the controversy as pointed out by the learned Single Judge need not be gone into. We have chosen to confine this judgment to that question alone.