The main legal point established is the Court's authority to appoint a Committee to investigate and recommend remedial measures in cases of alleged fraudulent activities in the Education Department.

ORDER

1. By this Public Interest Litigation filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioner seeks order and direction against the State of Maharashtra to initiate Administrative action, including recovering the salary paid to those appointed as against inadmissible posts visa-vis criminal action on the strength of the report of the Deputy Director of Education, against the fraudulent wing of officers of the Education Department, the private management and its Head Teachers directly responsible for creating forged and fraudulent student database and fix the responsibility and to submit the periodical and progress report in the matter of initiating the administrative vis-a-vis criminal prosecution against the fraudulent wing of officers of Education Department and the private management and its Head Teachers.

2. The petitioner has vehemently urged in this petition that, on the record of the State Government large number of students are alleged to have been admitted in various schools granted aid by the State Government and in the ratio prescribed, large number of teachers and other staff are appointed by such schools granted aid by the State Government. It is the case of the petitioner that, numbers of students alleged to have been admitted by various schools are inflated by large number of such schools in connivance with some of the officers of the State Government who are empowered to grant sanction for grant-in-aid and other facilities to these schools for imparting education to these students. He submits that, since the number of students are fraudulently inflated, crores of rupees of public money is diverted by such fraudulent means by the State Government under the guise of providing grant-in-aid and for providing various other facilities on such students who are in fact not admitted in those schools.

3. The petitioner has made various suggestions in the Public Interest Litigation and also across the Bar.

4. We have also perused the affidavit-in-reply filed by the State Government. A perusal of affidavit-in-reply filed by the State Government indicates that, on the basis of the report from the Revenue Department a drive has been carried out by the School Education Department. It is the case of the State Government that, from 2012 onwards these enquiries were going on and after grant of proper and requisite opportunities to the managements/schools finally the Education Department concluded that, the huge amount of Rs.4,10,39,604/- had been required to be spent by the State Government for primary section and Rs.2,24,88,277/- to be spent for secondary section. It is further stated that, the exercise of this enquiry had taken time upto August-2019. The Education Department has started taking steps to get the amount recovered from those managements and schools found guilty of malpractices. The State Government has annexed the chart at Exhibit-R-1 collectively in this regard. It is stated that, the enquiry is in progress and the same is not finalized.

5. In paragraph no.10 of the affidavit-in-reply it is stated that, the School Education Department, State of Maharashtra has already taken conscious decision and set out a policy vide circular dated 29.09.2020 to get the data and Adhar linking of all pupils studying either with school i.e. private, aided schools, unaided schools, the schools under Zilla Parishad and Municipal Administration. The School Education Department has revealed several invalid Adhar counts and on the basis of which the respondents have started taking corrective measures. In paragraph no.15 it is stated that, it is required that, all the students shall have to enroll over SARAL Pranali and the work of same is going on. The School Education Department has also provided requisite aid and machinery to the subordinate office of the respondents to enable them to enroll the students over SARAL Pranali easily.

6. It is further stated in the affidavit that, approximately 22 lakhs students takes admiss