( 1. ) BY this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners seek to challenge the right to recover from them the loss incurred to the Bank in refunding the mutilated notes by the petitioners 2 to 4.

( 2. ) PETITIONER No. 1 is an association of officers employed by the State Bank of India. This association is espousing the cause of the cashiers in general and want to canvass that the cashier of the State Bank of India would incur no personal liability in exchanging the mutilated notes. The facts and the circumstances leading to the order for realising the loss from the cashiers would differ from case to case and there is no common cause of a general nature, which the petitioner No. 1 could ventilate, and the petitioner No. 1 would have no locus standi in the case. We would, however, proceed to consider the case of the three petitioners.

( 3. ) ALL the three petitioners are Head Cashiers and were posted at all material times at the Civil Lines Branch of the State Bank of India. It is undisputed that the petitioners, M. P. Gupta, R. C. Namdeo and H. S. Verma, exchanged a considerable amount of mutilated notes of the denomination of less than Rs. 100