Alpana Kohli v. Directorate of Education & Ors.

1. Allowed, subject to all just exceptions.

2. Application stands disposed of.

3. Present writ petition has been filed by the Petitioner seeking the following reliefs: “i. issue a writ(s)/order(s)/direction(s) in the nature of mandamus directing the Government of NCT of Delhi to appoint Presiding officer in the Hon’ble Delhi School Tribunal at New Delhi within one month and further direct the Ld. Presiding Officer so appointed to finally decide the Appeal of the Petitioner within a further period of one month; AND/OR ii. Call for record of Appeal No. 48 of 2016 pending before the Hon’ble Delhi School Tribunal at New Delhi and decide the Appeal by invoking extraordinary powers of this Hon’ble Court; AND/OR iii. Declare that the Petitioner has suffered due to inaction of the Respondent Authorities in not appointing the presiding officer in Hon’ble Delhi School Tribunal at New Delhi”

4. Issue notice.

5. Ms. Latika Choudhary, learned counsel accepts notice on behalf of Respondent No. 1 and 2.

6. Mr. Pramod Gupta, learned counsel accepts notice on behalf of Respondent No. 3.

7. At the outset, learned counsel for the Petitioner hands over a copy of the order dated 19.01.2023, passed by a Co-ordinate Bench of this Court in W.P.(C) 4539/2022 titled as ‘Haripal Singh & Ors. v. Presiding Officer of Delhi School Education Tribunal Sh. Dilbagh Singh Punia & Ors.’, and submits that a similar order be passed in the present writ petition and direction be issued to the Delhi School Tribunal to dispose of the pending appeal of the Petitioner without any further delay.

8. I have perused the order dated 19.01.2023, operative part of which reads as follows: “…

5. Let the appointments to the Delhi School Tribunal be finalized within a period of two weeks. No further time shall be granted for the said purpose. If the Tribunal is not constituted, the GNCTD shall take a decision and notify the existing officer to hold the functions of the Delhi School Tribunal so that appeals of this nature can be heard and disposed of expeditiously.

6. The notification shall be issued within a period of two weeks and the appeal shall be taken up and decided by 30th April, 2023. If the appointment is not made, the Principal Secretary (Law), GNCTD who is currently holding the position of Presiding Officer of Delhi School Tribunal shall decide the same within a period of two months from now in accordance with law.

7. No adjournment shall be granted to either of the parties. The allegation is that the Presiding Officer was giving too many adjournments at the request of the School.

8. If the matter is not disposed of, the Petitioner is permitted to approach this Court by way of an application. …”

9. It is evident from the aforesaid order that the Court was in seisin of the grievance of the Petitioner therein pertaining to nonappointment of the Presiding Officer of the Delhi School Tribunal and pendency of the appeal for a long period of time.

10. Since an order has already been passed by this Court in W.P.(C) 4539/2022 directing that the appointments to the Delhi School Tribunal be finalized within two weeks, this writ petition is disposed of directing that as soon as the Delhi School Tribunal is functional, the appeal filed by the Petitioner being Appeal No. 48/2016, will be taken up for hearing and decided as expeditiously as possible and not later than two months from the date the hearing starts. Passing of this direction is necessitated on account of the fact that the appeal was filed in 2016 and the order-sheets, to which the attention of the Court is drawn by the learned counsel for the Petitioner, indicate that final arguments were heard on 06.10.2021 and written arguments were also filed. On 09.03.2022, the Presiding Officer observed that since the earlier arguments were heard long ago, the appeal required rehearing and the matter was adjourned to 16.03.2022. Subsequent order dated 28.03.2022 records that the arguments were heard and the matter was to come up for orders on 16.04.2022. Petitioner is, therefore, right in her grievance that the appeal was finally heard by the Tribunal on two occasions and despite the order being reserved on 28.03.2022, no order was passed by the earlier Presiding Officer and the Petitioner is suffering due to the pendency of the appeal. The order-sheets support the plea of the Petitioner that as and when the appeal is now taken up for hearing, it would effectively be the third round of final arguments.

11. The writ petition is accordingly disposed of, with the aforesaid direction to dispose of the Appeal within the time granted by this Court as soon as the Delhi School Tribunal is functional.