PETITIONER: THE BOARD OF HIGH SCHOOL & INTER-MEDIATE EDUCATION U. P. Vs. RESPONDENT: BAGLESHWAR PRASAD & OTHERS DATE OF JUDGMENT: 27/08/1962 BENCH: GAJENDRAGADKAR, P.B. BENCH: GAJENDRAGADKAR, P.B. GUPTA, K.C. DAS DAYAL, RAGHUBAR CITATION: 1966 AIR 875 1963 SCR (3) 767 CITATOR INFO : E 1969 SC 198 (14) ACT: Domestic Tribunal-Educational body-Disciplinary action -Interference by High Court-Constitution of India, Art.226. HEADNOTE: The appellant Board cancelled the declaration of the result of the respondent in the High School Certificate Examination held in 1960 accepting the findings of the subcommittee appointed by it to enquire into the charges made against the respondent and another candidate of having used unfair means in answering the English, Mathematics and Hindi papers. The charges were based upon the fact that in the Hindi 3rd paper set at the said examination, the respondent gave wrong answers to Question No. 4 in precisely the same form in which the answers had been given by the candidate whose Roll number was consecutive with that of the respondent. The High Court interpreting the charge as confined to that the respondent had copied either from the answer book of the candidate bearing the consecutive Roll Number or from a common source held that the findings of the enquiry committee were based on no evidence and quashed the cancellation of the result.On appeal by special leave. Held, that in the circumstances of the case, the identity of the wrong answers given by the respondent with that of the other candidate bearing the consecutive Roll Number rendered the charge of the respondent having employed unfair means highly probable and that the findings of the enquiry committee based upon such probabilities and circumstantial evidence could not be said to be based on no evidence as in such matters direct evidence quite often cannot be available. Held, further, that in dealing with cases like those of educational institutions dealing with matters of discipline like employing unfair means, the problem faced by the educational institutions should be appreciated by the 'High Court and so long as the enquiry held is fair and affords the candidate an opportunity to defend himself, the matter should 768 not be examined with the same strictness as applicable to criminal trials in the ordinary courts of law. JUDGMENT:
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Civil Appeal No. 328 of 1962.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated
September 4, 1961, of the Allahabad High Court in Civil
Misc. writ No. 3469 of 1960.
K. L. Misra, Advocate-General for the State of U. P.,
C. B. Agarwala, K. S. Hajela and C. P. Lal, for the
appellants.
S. P. Sinha and M. 1. Khowaja, for respondent No. 1.
1962. August 27. The Judgement of the Court was delivered
by
GAJENDRAGADKAR, J.-This appeal by special leave arises out
of a Writ Petition filed by the respondent Bagleshwar Prasad
against the Board of High School and Intermediate Education,
U. P., Allahabad, and its Secretary, appellants 1 & 2, and
another. By his petition, the respondent challenged the
validity of the order passed by appellant No. 1 on December
5, 1960, cancelling the respondent’s result at the High
School Examination held in 1960. It appears that the
respondent appeared for the said examination from the Nehru
Intermediate College Centre, Bindki. He was declared to
have passed the said examination in the 11 Division with
distinction in Art. Thereafter, he joined Intermediate
first year class in the Kulbaskar Ashram Agriculture College
at Allahabad. On the 3rd September, 1960, he received a
letter from the Principal, Adarsh Higher Secondary School,
Kora Jahanabad, from where he had appeared for the High
School examination, calling upon him to appear before a Sub-
Committee to answer the charge of having used unfair means
in English,
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Mathematics and Hindi papers. Accordingly, he appeared
before the said Sub-Committee. A charge was given to him
and his explanation was obtained on the said charge. This
charge was based on the fact that in Hindi 3rd paper set at
the said examination, the respondent had given wrong answers
to Question No. 4 in precisely the same firm in which the
said answers had been given by a candidate whose Roll No.
was 91733. The respondont’s Roll No. was 91731. The
respondent was shown the identical wrong answers to the said
Question which were found in the two papers, and he was
asked to explaining about the said identity of the wrong
answers. He admitted that the wrong answers appeared to be
identical, but he denied that he had used any unfair means.
The Sub-Committee however, was not satisfied with the
explanation and reported that both the respondent and the
candidate whose Roll No. was 94733 had used unfair means.
As a result of the report made by the Sub-Committee, the
first appellant passed an order cancelling the results of
both the candidates. Both the said candidates disputed the
validity of the said order, in the Allahabad High Court.
The petition filed by the candidate whose Roll No. was 94733
was dismissed, but that of the respondent was allowed, and
the impugned order passed by appellant No-1 cancelling, the
result of the respondent in the High School examination for
1960, has been set aside. It is against this order that the
appellants have come to this Court by special leave.
From the petition field by the the High Court (W. P. No.
3469 of 1960) it appears that he challenged the validity of
the impugned order on several grounds. The principal
contentions raised by the petitioner against the competence
and the authority of appellant No.1 and against the
regularity and fairness of the enquiry held, srose for
decision- before the High Court in the companion W. P. No.
3196 of 1960 also. The High
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Court rejected the said contentions of law in that W. P.
and for the reasons recorded in the judgment in that
petition, the said contentions were rejected even in the
present petition. Thus, the challenge to the validity of
the order made on points of law was not sustained.
The High Court then proceeded to examine the narrow ground
of attack against the validity of the order which was made
on the basis that the impugned order was not supported by
any evidence at all. It appears from the judgment of the
High Court that the High court was inclined to accept this
argument and it has set aside the order on the ground that
it is not supported by any evidence. The correctness of
this finding is seriously disputed before us by the learned
Advocate-General who appears for the appellants.
It is common ground that the proceed in taken against the
respondent in respect of the unfair means alleged to have
been adopted by him at the examination, are in the nature of
quasi-judicial proceedings, and as such, in a proper case,
orders passed as a result of the said proceedings would be
liable to be challenged under Art.226 of the Constitution.
It is also common ground that the High Court would be
justified in quashing the impugned order if it is satisfied
that the said order is not based on any evidence at all. An
order passed by a Tribunal holding a quasi-judicial enquiry
which is not supported by any evidence, is an order which is
erroneous on the face of it and as such, is liable to be
quashed by the High Court in exercise of its high
prerogative jurisdiction to issue a writ under Art. 226.
In the present case, the High Court has found that the
conclusion of the enquiry Committee that the respondent had
copied either from the answer book of the candidate bearing
Roll No-947 3 or
771
from a common source, was not supported by any evidence In
coming to this conclusion, the High Court has assumed that
the charge against the respondent was that he had copied
from the candidate bearing Roll No. 94733. Having made this
assumption, the High Court has observed that there was no
charge against the respondent that he connived in the act of
copying by the other candidate ,from his answer-book, and it
has added that there is no evidence in proof of such
connivance. The High Court has also stated that no evidence
had been shown to justify the allegations that any outsider
had helped the candidate, including the respondent. That,
in brief, is the genesis of the final conclusion of the High
Court.
It appears that the High Court was in error in assuming that
the only charge against the respondent was that he had
copied from the paper of the candidate bearing Roll No.
94733 and this error is basically responsible for the other
observations made by the High Court. The translation of the
charge as it has been printed in the record before us, no
doubt, seems to support the assumption made by the High
Court in regard to the nature of the charge’ But the charge
was framed in Hindi and it is common ground before us that
the Hindi charge has not been properly translated from the
record when it seems to show that what was alleged against
the respondent was only that he had copied out from
candidate bearing Roll No. 94733. The charge, in terms, was
that having regard to the identity of the mistaken answers,
the apprehension was that there had been copying, and that
is very different from saying that the only charge was that
the respondent had copied from the other candidate. This
position is made very clear when we consider the explanation
given by the respondent. In his explanation, the respondent
bad
772
stated that he had not copied out from the answer-, book of
any candidate, nor had he allowed anyone to copy out from
his answer-book, so far as he could. He admitted that the
mistaken answers in the two papers were identical and he
pleaded ‘that he could not say any thing as to why this
happened. He was also asked whether he had got any help
from outside and he gave an answer in the negative. It
would thus be seen that at the enquiry, the charge against
the respondent was, either that he copied from candidate
bearing Roll No. 94733, or that he connived at the said
candidate copying from his answer-book, or that both of them
had copied from a common source. In either case, ‘it would
amount to the adoption, of unfair means. Therefore, in our
opinion, the High Court was in error in assuming that the
charge was very narrow and did not include the two other
alternatives on which the adoption of unfair means was
sought to be established.
There is another circumstance which is relevant and
significant and that has been ignored by the High Court in
dealing with this petition: It appears that at the
examination held at Bindki Centre, unfair means were adopted
on a very large scale by a large number of students and the
examination appears to have been conducted in an atmosphere
which was not at all congenial to the enforcement of the
discipline which has to be observed in conducting
examinations. It appears that there are rivalries and party
politics in the Municipal Board of Bindki that runs the
institution at which this examination was held, and there
are rivalries and party politics even amongst the members of
the staff. The members of the Municipal Board and other
influential people of the locality bring undue pressure on
the Principal and the Invigilators to help their wards or
the wards
773
of their friends and relatives in the Board’s Examination.
As a result of this unhealthy atmosphere, the Centre at
Bindki for High School examination had been abolished for
some years, but on account of public pressure it was re-
started in 1960, and the result was very unfortunate.
It also appears that on the day of English paper, while
students were answering the paper in Room No. 3, an answer
paper by some outsider was dropped into the room 15 minutes
before the time to answer questions was over.’ This paper
was thrown in room No. 3 from room No. 18. It was a typed
paper giving answers to all the Questions. The Assistant
teacher, Khajuha, who was one of the Invigilators,
complained that the Parcha was typed in the office of the
Superintendent of the Centre, but this allegation was
denied. Indeed, from the reports made by the invigilators
and the findings made by the Enquiry Committee, it appears
that the Invigilators themselves were so much frightened by
the prevailing rowdyism and by pressure from influential
people that they found themselves powerless to maintain
discipline in the examination hall. It is, therefore, not
surprising that some invigilators could not prevent copying
and in fact, six of them had to be warned to be careful in
future.
The report of the enquiry committee also shows that the
complaints which they were to investigate referred to
copying on a large scale in several papers besides Hindi,
and it is after examining all the complaints in the light of
the evidence available to them that the Committee made its
final report; and in that report, it held that the
respondent and candidate bearing Roll No. 94733 were guilty
of having used unfair means.
774
In dealing with the question as to whether the Committee
was justified in coming to this conclusion against the
respondent, it would not be reasonable to exclude from
consideration the circumstances under which the whole
enquiry came to be hold and the general background of the
prevailing disturbed and riotous atmosphere in the
Examination Hall during the days that the High School
Examination was held at the Centre in 1960. Unfortunately,
the High Court has ignored this background altogether.
Before the High Court, a statement was filed showing the
seating arrangement in Room No. 10 where the respondent was
sitting for writing his answers. It appears that he was
No. 3 in the 3rd row, whereas the other candidate with Roll
No. 94733 was No. 4 in the second row. The High Court was
very much impressed by the fact that the respondent could
not have looked back and copied from the answer. book of the
other candidate, and the High Court did not think that there
was any evidence to show that the other candidate could have
copied from the respondents paper with his connivance. We
have looked at the incorrect answers ourselves and we are
not prepared to hold that the identical incorrect answers
were given by the two candidates either by accident or by
coincidence. Some of the incorrect answers, and,
particularly, the manner in which they have been given,
clearly suggest that they were the result of either one
candidate copying from the other, or both candidates copying
from a common source. The significance of this fact has
been completely missed by the High Court. The question
before the Enquiry Committee had to be decided by it in the
light of the nature of the incorrect answers themselves, and
that is what the Enquiry Committee has done. It would, we
think
775
be inappropriate in such a case to require direct evidence
to show that the respondent could have looked back and
copied from the answer written by the other candidate who
was sitting behind him. There was still the alternative
possibility that the candidate sitting behind may have
copied from the respondent with his connivance. It is also
not unlikely that the two candidates may have talked to each
other. The atmosphere prevailing in the Examination Hall
does not rule out this possibility. These are all matters
which the Enquiry Committee had to consider, and the fact.
that the Enquiry Committee did not write an elaborate
report, does not mean that it did not consider all the
relevant facts before it came to the conclusion that the
respondent had used unfair’ means.
In dealing with petitions of this type, it is necessary to
bear in mind that educational institutions like the
Universities or appellant No. 1 set up Enquiry Committees to
deal with the problem posed by the adoption of unfair means
by candidates, and normally it is within the jurisdiction of
such domestic Tribunals to decide all relevant questions in
the light of the evidence adduced before them. In the
matter of the adoption of unfair means, direct evidence may
sometimes be available, but cases may arise where direct
evidence is not available and the question will have to be
considered in the light of probabilities and circumstantial
evidence. This problem which educational institutions have
to face from time to time is a serious- problem and unless
there is justification to do so, courts should be slow to
interfere with the decisions of domestic Tribunals appointed
by educational bodies like the Universities. In dealing
with the validity of the impugned orders passed by
Universities under Art. 226, the High Court is not sitting
in appeal over the decision in question; its jurisdiction is
limited and though,
776
it is true that if the impugned order is not supported by
any evidence, at all, the High Court would be justified to
quash that order. But the conclusion that the impugned
order is not supported by any evidence must be reached after
considering the question as to whether probabilities and
circumstantial evidence do not justify the said conclusion.
Enquiries held by domestic Tribunals in such cases must, no
doubt, be fair and students against whom charges are framed
must be given adequate opportunities to defend themselves
and in holding such enquiries, the Tribunal, must
scrupulously follow rules of natural justice; but it would,
we think, not be reasonable to import into these enquiries
all considerations which govern criminal trials in ordinary
courts of law. In the present case, no animus is suggested
and no malafides have been pleaded. The enquiry has been
fair and the respondent has had an opportunity of making his
defence. That being so, we think the High Court was not
justified in interfering with the order passed against the
respondent.
We ought, however, to add that though we are inclined to
accept the argument raised by the learned Advocate-General
against the decision of the High Court, we do not propose to
make any consequential order is favour of the appellants,
because the learned Advocate General has fairly conceded
that he does not want any such order in the present appeal.
It appears that the respondent has, in June, 1962, passed
his Intermediate Examination and it has been fairly conceded
that there is no intention to disturb his career under the
present circumstances. The learned Advocate-General wanted
a decision from us in this appeal because he apprehended
that the reasoning adopted by the High Court in setting
aside the order passed against the respondent may be
construed to mean that
777
under Art. 226, the High Court can examine the merits of the
order passed by appellant No. 1 in such cases.
The result is, though we agree with the appellants that the
order passed by the High Court was not justified, we refrain
from setting it aside for the reasons just explained. There
would be no order as to costs.