Judgment

BHAGWATI. J.:- This appeal by special leave is directed against two orders made by a Division Bench of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh, one dated 24th July, 1984 and the other dated 18th September 1984, in so far as they direct the Chief Secretary to the Government Himachal Pradesh to file an affidavit setting out what action has been taken by the State Government towards implementation of the recommendation contained in paragraph 16 of the Report of the Anti-Ragging Committee. The impugned orders are in our opinion wholly unsustainable and ordinarily we would not have taken time to deliver a reasoned judgment and merely set aside the impugned orders with a brief observation, but we think it necessary to state in some detail our opinion in regard to the directions given in the impugned orders, because we find that this is one of those few cases which demonstrates what we have often said before, that public interest litigation is a weapon which has to be used with great care and circumspection and the judiciary has to be extremely careful to see that under the guise of redressing a public grievance it does not encroach upon the sphere reserved by the Constitution to the Executive and the legislature.

2. It appears that the Chief Justice of the High Court received a letter dated 4th April, 1984, from the guardian of a student of the Medical College in Shimla complaining about the ragging of freshers by senior students within as also outside the college campus and the hostel. The guardian of the student had annexed along with his letter to the Chief Justice a letter dated 25th March, 1984 received by him from his son. The Division Bench of the High Court presided over by the Chief Justice treated these two letters as constituting the Memo of Writ Petition but directed that these two letters should not be placed on the record of the proceedings in view of the request made in paragraph 6 of the letter of the guardian that the identity of the writer should not be disclosed on account of fear of reprisal. and for the self-same reason the Division Bench ordered that the identity of the student and the guardian should not be disclosed, in the proceedings. The Division Bench treating the two letters as a writ petition registered them as Civil Writ Petition No. 155 of 1984 and issued notice to the State Government, the Principal of the Medical College, Simla, the Himachal Pradesh University and the Director of Health Services, Government of Himachal Pradesh who were arrayed as respondents Nos. 1 to 4. On receipt of the notice of the Writ Petition, the Government of Himachal Pradesh filed an affidavit setting out the steps which the State Government and the college authorities had taken to check the ragging of freshers by senior students. The Director of Medical Education-cum-Principal of the Medical College, Simla also filed an affidavit opposing the admission of the writ petition on the ground that the college authorities had taken various steps for the purpose of curbing the evil of ragging and in fact had taken action on at least two occasions awarding punishment to the students who indulged in ragging by suspending them for a period of 4 to 6 months. The Division Bench, on a consideration of this material placed before it, came to the conclusion that the practice of ragging was prevailing in the Medical College, Simla on a noticeable scale and that ragging took the form of subjecting freshers including female students to inhuman and humiliating treatment degenerating even into physical violence and that the college authorities had not been able to effectively control ragging with the result that the college administration had lost confidence of a sizeable section of students, parents and well-wishers as regards its capacity to deal with the problem of ragging. The Division Bench accordingly gave various directions which included a direction to the State Government to constitute a committee consisting of the Vice-Chancellor