1. These two petitions under Art.226 of the Constitution have been filed on behalf individually, of two Service Associations of Government servants against the same Respondent State, and seek to canvass the validity of a directive issued in the form of a Circular, forbidding both the Associations from retaining a non-official, who happened to be the same, as their President. In view of the importance of the question involved, they were referred by one of us, before whom they came on in the first instance, to a Division Bench. The petitions were heard together and are being disposed of by this single judgment.

2. Of these petitions O. P. 80 is filed by the Secretary of the Government School Teachers' Federation which was formed on 14-1-1955. The Federation is composed of three constituent units, Primary School Teachers' Association, Secondary School Teachers' Association and Graduate Teachers' Association, each of which elect 25 representatives who together constitute the General Body of the Federation. From the very inception Sri. G. Chandrasekhara Pillai, Advocate, had been elected as the President of the Federation and had been functioning as such O. P. 81, the other p