KALYANMAL JAISANI Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) KALYANMAL Jaisani has filed this writ petition under Art. 226 of the Constitution praying that a writ of mandamus, or any other appropriate writ, order of direction be issued to the State Government to immediately constitute a Board in accordance with the provisions of sec. 3 of the Rajasthan Social Education Board Act, 1961 (herenafter called the Act ).

(2.) THE petitioner's case is that the State legislature enacted a law known as the Rajasthan Social Education Board. Act, 1961, whereby a legislative mandate was issued to the Government to constitute a Social Education Board for Rajasthan under sec. 3 of the Act. His grievance is that the State Government has not carried out this legislative directive for the last 11 years and, therefore, this Court may issue a writ of mandamus to the State Government to constitute the said Board.

(3.) LORD Avory J. who, however, differed with the majority, observed, while approving the principle laid down in Reg. vs. Lewisham Union (1897) 1 QB 498) : "the prosecutor must be clothed with a clear legal and equitable right to something which is properly the subject of the writ, as a legal right by virtue of an act of Parliament. . . . . . . . . . . . When a party comes to this Court with some kind of personal right, and asks to have duty of some one else towards him ordered to be performed by mandamus, he stands in a totally different position. When a person who has no such individual right comes to the Court and asks to have a statutory or other duty performed the matter stands in a wholly different position. Although it is true that that is not the ground on which the rule was there refused, that was a statement of the law which I believe to be perfectly accurate, and which seems to me to apply to the present case. In my opinion the Court is not entitled to take notice of what we are told took place in the committee room when this Bill was before the House. It does not appear to me that that confers upon the applicant the kind of legal personal right which is referred to in the judgments which I have cited. For that reason I doubt whether the applicants are persons who can properly apply for this writ. "