- (1.) THIS is an application by the Amrit Bazar Patrika, Limited, a Private Limited company which owns the Amrita Bazar Patrika Press situate at Allahabad and publishes the English daily newspaper known as the Amrita Bazar Patrika, for the issue of an order, direction or a writ in the nature of a writ of Mandamus commanding the- respondent No. 1, the Board of High School and intermediate Education, U. P. , to allow the petitioner to have access to the results of the High school and Intermediate Examinations held by the said Board this year after the same have been passed by the Results Committee of the Board with privileges, facilities, conveniences, and opportunities which have been made available by the said Board to the respondent No. 2, the newspaper Limited, which publishes the daily Newspaper called the "leader". The petition also prays for the issue of an order, direction, or a writ in the nature of a writ of certiorari to the respondent No. 1 to transmit the record of the" correspondence and resolutions bearing on the subject of the publication of the aforesaid result of the year 1955 to this Court to the end that the decision of the respondent No. 1 embodied in the letter dated 3-5-1955 be quashed. The petition further prays for the passing of any other order or direction that may be found to be appropriate and suitable in accordance with the exigencies of the case.
(2.) THE petition urges that on several occasions in the past the results of the High-School and intermediate Examinations held by respondent No. 1 have been published in the columns of the amrita Bazar Patrika and that on 18-2-1955, the Board enquired from the petitioner whether it was ready and witling to undertake the publication of the results. The petitioner signified its consent and thereupon on 7-3-1955 the Results Sub-Committee of the Board met to consider the acceptance of the newspapers to publish the results and the representative of the Amrita Bazar patrika viz. , Sri S. N. Chanda was invited to attend the meeting. It is alleged that Sri Chanda accepted all the terms and conditions proposed by the Board and agreed to publish the results and the Sub-Committee assured the representative that its final decision would be communicated in due course. It is said that with a view to carry, out the work of publication with the requisite degree of efficiency and due promptitude the petitioner incurred substantial expenses m making preparation and collecting materials as set out in the affidavit. The respondent No. 1, the Board, failed to communicate its decision for about two weeks and a reminder was sent on or about 25-3-1955 to the Board to which the Board replied that the matter was fully considered at its meeting on 11-4-1955. On 3-5-1955, an intimation was received by the petitioner from the Secretary of the Board to the effect that the Board refused to allow the petitioner to publish the results in the columns of the Amrita Bazar Patrika. The petitioner urges that the Board is under a statutory obligation to make the results available to the public after they have been passed by the Results Committee and after they have been so passed they ceased to be the property of the Board and become the property of the public, that it is not within the competence of the Board to confer the light of monopoly and the exclusive right of publication of the results on any individual newspaper to the exclusion and prejudice of other newspapers and that the petitioner has a fundamental right of having access to the results in order to carry on its business and render service and discharge its duties to its constituents in general and to readers, examinees and their guardians and those who are interested in the results in particular. It is further urged that to confer the exclusive right of publication of the results amounts to discrimination against the petitioner and other newspapers and that conferring of such exclusive right of publication precludes the petitioner from being eligible to perform its duties as a newspaper and is destructive of and incompatible with the democratic principles and public policy and constitutes a gross violation of the petitioner's fundamental right to carry on its business. It is stated that a statutory corporation, it was incumbent on the Respondent No. 1 to allow every newspaper to have access to the results with equal facilities and to refrain from discriminating one paper against another and mete out preferential treatment to that particular newspaper. The affidavit further states that near about 1946 the results were published, by the Government Press and the newspapers purchased result-sheets from the Government Press and supplied to their readers those result sheets along with their papers. It is urged that this was due to the fact that the newspapers were not in a position to publish the result-sheets because of shortage of newsprint and several other difficulties. In 1947 none of the local papers of Allahabad published the results and these were published by the Hindustan Times, New Delhi. In 1948 the Leader, as a result of discriminatory treatment meted out by the Board, published the results. In 1949 and 1950 the Amrita Bazar Patrika published the results and so did the Leader. The issues of the Amrita Bazar Patrika containing the results of 1949, popularly known as Results Supplement were supplied to the public considerably before the Leader could make the Result supplement available to the public, notwithstanding the fact that the Board had imposed a time lag on the publication of the results. In 1951, 1952 and 1953 neither the Leader nor the Patrika published the results. The Bharati bhandar, a publication branch of the Leader published the results of 1952, In the months of April and June, 1953, it is stated that the petitioner received certain number of letters including one dated 30-4-1953, on the subject of the publication of results. This letter mentioned that the exclusive right of publication of results has been abandoned. Eventually in that year (1953) neither the Leader published the results nor the Amrita Bazar patrika. In that year the results were published by the Hindustan Times of Delhi and some others papers of Delhi but some of the important details of the results had been omitted, e. g. , names of the successful candidates, the division secured by them at the High School Examination except those who had been placed in the first division. These were not to the satisfaction of the persons interested. It is stated that in 1954 both the Leader and the Patrika suggested to the Board that the results may be given to any one of the aforesaid two papers with the exclusive right of publication. Eventually the Leader published the results but the Result Supplements were available to the public at many centres a bit late after the arrival of the result-sheets supplied by the Board to those centres. It is then stated that in the year 1955 on an invitation from the Board the Patrika had sent its representative and had agreed to publish the results on the terms proposed. It is claimed that in point of efficiency, of prompt and expeditious printing publication, reaching the result-sheets to the far and distant stations, the Amrita Bazar Patrika does not yield superiority to any other paper and the record of its performance in the matter of publication of the results had been good and there was no justification for the preferential treatment meted out to the Leader against the patrika this year.
(3.) NOTICES were issued on 23-5-1955 on the petition by my brother Oak J. and he directed that a date for hearing be fixed in the first week of June 1955.;