JUDGMENT :

Ashutosh Kumar, J.

1. Heard Mr. Lalit Kishore, learned Senior Advocate assisted by Mr. Satyabir Bharti for the appellants and Mr. P.K. Shahi, learned Senior Advocate assisted by Ms. Shama Sinha for the respondents.

2. All the appeals have been taken up together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

3. The facts of LPA No. 875 of 2019 (The Bihar School Examination Board vs. Rambalak Prasad Singh Dropadi Devi Madhyamik Uchatar Madhyamik Vidyalaya) arising out of CWJC No. 379 of 2019 has been taken up for illustrative set of facts for deciding these appeals.

4. In all such cases, the Bihar School Examination Board (hereinafter called ‘the Board’) has taken the plea that the affiliation granted to these schools were bad in law since its inception as the affiliation had been granted only by the Chairman of the Board and not by the Board as constituted under the Bihar School Examination Board Act, 1952 (refer to Section 3/Chapter-2). Later, the Board had found that all these schools do not have sufficient infrastructure to qualify for being granted affiliation as provided under Regulation 3 of Bihar School Examination Board (Senior Secondary) Affiliation Regulation, 2011 (hereinafter called ‘2011 Regulation’) or for continuing their affiliation because a specially constituted team had found severe deficiencies in the infrastructure and the explanation offered by the schools pursuant to the show-cause notices issued to them, were also not satisfactory.

5. The learned counsel for the respondents/schools have inter alia contended that the order impugned in all such writ petitions giving rise to the appeals do not reflect any application of mind in as much as the orders are with respect to withdrawal of affiliation under Regulation 15 of the 2011 Regulation for the reason that in case it was found by the Board that those schools did not have sufficient infrastructure or were not fulfilling other conditions as enumerated in regulation 3 of 2011 Regulation, they ought to have had been provided with adequate time and opportunity, up to a maximum of one year, for adequate compliance/removal of defects and if those schools would have failed to upgrade themselves, then only the Board ought to have taken a decision to disaffiliate such institutions.

6. That not having been done, the order suffers from the vice of non-observance of the provisions of the Regulation 15 which has been resorted to for disaffiliating/withdrawing the affiliation of such institutions.

7. It has also been contended by one of the learned Advocates in one such appeal that from the impugned order, it is not reflected that the opinion of the Inspecting team regarding deficiency in the infrastructure of the schools was routed through the Affiliation committee, which is a clear violation of the provisions contained in Section 10(C) of the Act of 1952 and regulation 14(5) of 2011 Regulation.

8. It has further been argued that it makes no difference that the Board in its counter affidavit before the writ court had stated that the report of the Inspecting team was placed before the Affiliation committee and only thereafter the Board had taken a decision. Assuming but not admitting this fact to be correct, non-reflection of the opinion of the affiliation committee in the decision of the Board to disaffiliate the schools only indicates that either there was no such opinion of the Affiliation committee or if there was any, the same was never adverted to. In both the cases, the order of the Board disaffiliating the institutions ought not to survive and be set aside.

9. Lastly, it has been argued that the learned single Judge while dealing with such an order was rightly of the view that once a decision was taken for withdrawing affiliation, it was to be presumed that affiliation had been granted, even though in an irregular manner, but if a decision was taken under the provisions of regulation 15, the procedure ingrained therein could not have been avoided by the Board