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St. Mary's Education Society vs. Rajendra Prasad Bhargava

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 856Decided 24 Aug 2022
Civil Appeal No. 5789 of 2022
Aniruddha Bose · J.B. Pardiwala

Background

The respondent, a long-serving clerical employee (LDC) of a private, unaided Catholic minority school in Madhya Pradesh, was terminated after a departmental disciplinary inquiry into several misconduct charges (rude behaviour, refusing to accept salary, threatening letters, etc.), and his internal appeal to the school's Disciplinary Committee was dismissed. He then filed a writ petition in the High Court under Article 226 challenging the termination. A single judge held the writ was not maintainable against a private minority institution, but a Division Bench reversed that and held the writ was maintainable, sending the matter back for a decision on merits, prompting the school's appeal to the Supreme Court on the maintainability question alone.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a private, unaided minority school (protected under Article 30(1) of the Constitution) is not "State" under Article 12, and even though it performs the broadly public function of imparting education, that alone does not make every internal decision of the institution subject to writ review, only actions with an actual "public law element" are. Since the respondent's service was governed purely by an ordinary contract (his disciplinary/termination process required approval only from the school's own internal Disciplinary Committee, not any government or statutory authority), his dispute was essentially a private contractual matter, not a public law wrong. The Court distinguished this case from precedents like Marwari Balika Vidhyalaya, where government approval was actually required for the teacher's removal, and concluded that the writ petition was not maintainable, restoring the single judge's order and setting aside the Division Bench's ruling, while leaving the respondent free to pursue other legal remedies (e.g., before the CBSE or a civil suit) and clarifying that the Court expressed no opinion on the merits of the underlying termination dispute.

Lesson Learnt

An employee of a private, unaided institution, even one performing a broadly "public" function like education, generally cannot challenge an ordinary service dispute (such as termination) through a writ petition in the High Court unless government approval or a statutory provision actually governs that specific action; otherwise the correct remedy is a civil suit or another available legal/regulatory channel, not a writ.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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