LAW FOR ALL

Whether the Agreement dated 18.07.2007 relied on by the High Court for issuance of impugned direction was not in accordance with the Rules of Executive Business, State of Bihar which are statutory rules framed under Article 166 (3) of the Constitution of India. On the other hand, it is the stand of the Federation that the Agreement executed on 18.07.2007 was a valid one and pursuant to the same, the State Government itself issued directions to the authorities concerned for its implementation. -it is, therefore, settled law that provisions of Art. 166 of the Constitution are only directory and not mandatory in character and, if they are not complied with, it can be established as a question of fact that the impugned order was issued in fact by the State Government or the Governor. The judgment of this Court in Bachhittar Singh v. The State of Punjab ((1962) Supp. 3 S.C.R. 713) does not help the appellants, for in that case the order signed by the Revenue Minister was not communicated to the party and, therefore, it was held that there was no effective order. (5) In the light of the aforesaid decisions, let us look at the facts of this case. Though Annexure IV does not conform to the provisions of Art. 166 of the Constitution, it ex facie says that an order to the effect mentioned therein was issued by the Government and it is not denied that it was communicated to the selection committee. In neither of the affidavits filed by the appellants there was any specific averment that no such order was issued by the Government. In the counter-affidavit filed by B. R. Varma, Deputy Secretary to the Government of Mysore, Education Department, there is a clear averment that the Government gave the direction contained in Annexure IV and a similar letter was issued to the selection committee for admissions to Medical Colleges and this averment was not denied by the appellants by filing any affidavit. In the circumstances when there are no allegation at all in the affidavit that the order was not made by the Government, we have no reason to reject the averment made by the Deputy Secretary to the Government that the order was issued by the Government. There are no merits in this contention.” From this decision, it is clear that the provisions of Article 166 of the Constitution are only directory and not mandatory in character and if they are not complied with, it can be established as a question of fact that the impugned order was issued in fact by the State Government. In the case on hand, we have already demonstrated various communications issued by the Government for implementation of the earlier decision. In such circumstance, we have no reason to reject those communications sent by the higher level officers of the State Government. 17) Inasmuch as all the persons who were competent to represent were the parties to the said Agreement referred to above and after making such commitment by the State Government, as rightly observed by the High Court, we are also of the view that the same has to be honored without any exception. By the impugned order, the High Court has not only directed the State Government to implement the commitment given by it having been reduced into writing on 18.07.2007, honoured by the State Government itself in subsequent letters/correspondences but also directed the Federation to call off the strike immediately in the interest of the student community. We also make it clear that though the High Court termed the impugned order as interim in nature, considering the fact that the writ petition came to be filed by a student in the interest of the student community by writing a letter which was treated as a PIL, no further order need be passed in the said writ petition, namely, CWJC No. 10870 of 2008 pending on the file of the High Court at Patna and it stands closed. 18) In view of our conclusion, we direct the State of Bihar to implement the impugned order of the High Court dated 07.08.2008 within a period of three months from the date of receipt of copy of this judgment. The appeal filed by the State of Bihar is dismissed with the above direction. There will be no order as to costs.