Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.:- We may as well begin this judgment with a prefatory sociological observation. The meaning of two common expressions teaching experience and teaching institution incarnated into a legal frame and subjected to forensic dissection and examination during three years of litigation makes up this bitter contest between a talented orthopaedic surgeon and two like rivals trying to break each other s academic bones to gain the post of Lecturer in Orthopaedics, one in each of two government medical colleges in Bihar. Our judicial bone-setting operation cannot undo the social fracture inflicted by this long expensive bout in court. Research and reform of the system is needed if the therapeutic value of law is to last and be not lost.

2. The two appeals before us, by special leave, unfold a musical-chair type situation where three candidates ran for two posts in the Government-run Patna and Dharbanga Medical Colleges. Inevitably one lost or, rather, was screened as ineligible, his British work and experience notwithstanding, and chagrined by his discomfiture, he, Dr. Mukherjee, challenged the whole selection by a writ petition on the short and ambitious ground that