No relief for Punjab teachers, court upholds college’s right to discontinue course
Making it clear that personal hardship alone cannot open the doors of constitutional courts, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that teaching faculty cannot demand the continuation of a discontinued college course merely to protect themselves from possible retrenchment.
“The courts cannot be converted into forums for raising perceived hardship — it is not every disquiet that attracts the aegis of constitutional remedy,” the Bench ruled, while asserting that service-related fears did not confer upon the faculty the legal standing necessary to challenge a purely administrative policy decision.
“The petitioners, in order to avoid the adverse effect on their careers on account of the discontinuation of a course, cannot be permitted to invoke the extraordinary writ jurisdiction of this court by seeking a writ for the continuation of the course in question,” the Bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel held.
The court observed that the teachers might find themselves “incidentally prejudiced” because of the college’s decision.
But such indirect or incidental harm alone would not give them the legal standing to challenge the college or the managing society’s administrative decision through a writ petition. The teachers had argued that discontinuing the BA degree course in a Sangrur college would impact their careers and lead to retrenchment.
The court asserted that such collateral detriment might indeed cause hardship, but it did not automatically give teachers the legal right to challenge the administrative decision under writ jurisdiction.
“The doctrine of locus standi requires a direct, tangible, and legally cognizable injury. A person merely affected in consequence of a decision does not, by that token alone, acquire legal standing to impugn it,” the Bench asserted before disposing of a plea by the college teachers seeking continuation.
The Bench cautioned that constitutional writ jurisdiction could not become a forum to address every perceived hardship or disquiet.
“Mere sentiments or personal inconvenience, however deeply felt, cannot confer a justiciable right,” the Bench noted, while differentiating between being “aggrieved in fact” and “aggrieved in law.” The Bench added that the distinction was neither illusory nor academic, but was “substantive, nay fundamental”.
“The former may engender personal hardship, but it is only the latter that empowers an individual to invoke the constitutional jurisdiction of this Court”. Referring to the “age-old” legal principle “Lex Non Facet Votis Delicatorum”, the Bench asserted the law did not favor the complaints of the faintly aggrieved.
“The mere fact that the discontinuation of the course in question may, as a matter of consequence, alter the employment prospects or pecuniary expectations of the petitioners does not, in and of itself, elevate their grievance to one of constitutional justiciability.”
The court observed that the petitioners had already approached the Punjab Educational Tribunal for the redressal of their service-related grievances. “The tribunal is directed to decide the litigation between the rival parties pending adjudication before it within two months…,” the Bench asserted.
Punjab