The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement of notice before termination of contractual service and the entitlement to last drawn salary in lieu of prior notice.

JUDGMENT

Abhijit Gangopadhyay, J. - Mat 267 OF 2019

1. This mandamus appeal has been filed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, in short hereafter) which is a creature of Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, 1956 and it is an institute of national importance under Institutes of Technology Act, 1961. This appeal (MAT 267 of 2019) has been filed against the judgment and order dated January 9, 2019 in W.P. No. 15270 (w) of 2003 (Dr. Subroto Roy -versus- Union of India and Others) passed by Single Bench but the memorandum of appeal erroneously named another Hon'ble Judge as the author of the impugned judgment and order. Such mistake is ministerial one and to be corrected by the Department wherever necessary for maintaining the correct record of this Court from the certified copy of the judgment.

The writ petitioner/respondent has also filed an appeal against the above judgment and order being MAT No. 282 of 2019, we will deal with it later.

2. The case, in brief, made out in the writ application by the writ petitioner, Dr. Subroto Roy, is that he was appointed as a faculty member of Vinod Gupta School Management (VGSOM, in short, hereafter) of IIT. In the course of hearing of this appeal it has come to light that VGSOM is a part of IIT but it has separate Rules for its management. The petitioner was appointed contractually on September 2, 1996 for a period of five years which expired on September 1, 2001.

3. The writ petitioner/respondent herein stated further in his writ application that he was told that his term of the contractual appointment had been extended for a further period of five years and further steps would be taken to formalise the same. Even before such formalisation the writ petitioner was assigned duty and responsibilities for the academic session 2001-2002 and he started performing his responsibilities based on the oral representation made by the responsible office holders of IIT like the Director, the Deputy Director, the Dean of Faculty and Dean of VGSOM.

4. It was the further case of the writ petitioner/respondent (hereinafter referred to as the respondent) that by an office memo dated September 14, 2001 the extension was formally communicated to him enclosing therewith a new draft agreement extending the contractual service. The petitioner found that the draft agreement was at variance with the terms of his earlier agreement of service. According to the respondent he took up this matter of variation of terms of agreement of service with some responsible post holders of VGSOM who had informed the respondent that his tenure had been extended on the same terms and conditions.

The respondent in his writ petition though indicated that the complete academic freedom was missing in the said new agreement (which was there in the 1st argument) at the time of hearing of this appeal he indicated two other clauses of the said new draft agreement by which he was aggrieved. Those two clauses are paragraph 2(a) and paragraph 2(b) of the said draft new agreement which are set-out below:

"2.(a) The party of the Second Part shall subject to satisfactory service be on contract service for a period of five years from 2.09.2001 to 1.09.2006.

(b) The aforesaid Contractual service of the Party of the Second part will cease automatically with effect from the date of expiry of the contract of five year from the date of joining or as agreed between the Institute and the Party."

(Vide: page 137 of Volume-I of the paper book)

It has not been explained by the respondent what is really understood by the expression 'academic freedom' and as to why a contractual service holder whose contract is going to be renewed would object to the other two conditions being Clause 2(a) and Clause 2(b) which has been set-out hereinabove.

5. The bottom line of the above grievance of the respondent is that the new draft agreement for the second five-year period was not finalized signed and executed by the parties but the responden