IMPORTANT POINT
The central legal point established in the judgment is the importance of adherence to rules and regulations, the need for widespread publication of government decisions affecting government-aided schools, and the interpretation of the Assam Service Rules and Article 166 of the Constitution in the context of age-bar for the appointment of teachers in government-aided schools.

JUDGMENT

Sanjib Banerjee, CJ. - The appeal is directed against a judgment and order of January 28, 2020 by which the writ petition instituted by the first respondent has succeeded and, in effect, the writ court has held that in view of several previous instances of teachers in government-aided schools having been appointed at a time that they had crossed 35 years of age, the writ petitioner in this case is entitled to the same benefit.

2. The facts fall within a short compass. The writ petitioner, the present appellant and several others were engaged by the respondent school, which is government-aided, upon the school's perception that additional teachers, other than the posts sanctioned for the relevant subject, were necessary in view of the number of students in the school. The salary or honorarium or money that is paid to such teachers engaged in addition to the sanctioned posts, is not borne by the State and it is clearly a private affair of a particular school and the extent that it is able to afford to engage teachers outside the posts approved by the government. The government aid comes only in respect of the approved posts. The government is not involved in the process of selection or otherwise of the temporary teachers, nor is any sanction of the government taken for such purpose. Unlike for sanctioned posts, the qualifications for engagement as additional teachers are not fixed by the government.

3. In the present case, an advertisement was issued in the year 2014 inviting applications for interested persons to be appointed as a Bengali teacher in the respondent school. The relevant advertisement only required that Bengali should have been a subject in which the candidate received education up to the graduate level. More specifically, the advertisement did not refer to any age.

4. It also appears that in the examination that was conducted for the selection of the most suitable candidates to fill up the vacancy, the writ petitioner was head and shoulders above the rest of the field and the present appellant came a distant second in such examination. Upon concluding the entire process, the respondent school duly applied to the State, recommending the appointment of the writ petitioner as the most suitable candidate as discovered in course of the selection process. However, such recommendation of the school was rejected by the Sub-Divisional School Education Officer, Shillong by a letter dated November 6, 2014. The effective sentence in the short letter is the following:

'... I regret to inform you that the proposal for appointment cannot be accepted, as the candidate is overage.'

5. The relevant candidate, whose candidature was not accepted, approached this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution and the writ petition succeeded. However, the appellant herein, who was the second- placed candidate in the selection process, challenged the order passed on the ground that she was a necessary party to the writ petition as the right to fill up the vacancy had vested in her upon the candidature of the writ petitioner being rejected by the State. By a judgment and order of October 11, 2017, the appellate court set aside the order passed on the original petition on June 1, 2016 and returned the writ petition to the board of the writ court for its fresh consideration after the appellant herein was impleaded as a party thereto.

6. It is here that a point of some interest has to be noted. It appears that an altogether fresh writ petition was filed by incorporating the appellant as a party thereto and by substantially amending the original petition that was filed. It is such amended writ petition that came to be taken up for consideration and has culminated in the judgment and order of January 28, 2020 impugned herein.

7. The appellant points out that a chart that had been relied upon in the original petition by the writ petitioner and which referred to several appointments of school teachers being made beyond the age of 35, was not rel