- (1.) By these petitions the petitioners seek a writ of mandamus directing the respondent-Haryana State Electricity Board, a statutory body to refund the earnest money or security deposit offered by the petitioner in response to the invitation to offer issued by the Haryana State Electricity Board. The petitioner-Company was unable to supply the material on the terms required by the Haryana State Electricity Board and, therefore, no contract of supply materialised. The claim of the petitioner for refund of the earnest money or security deposit not having been acceded to by the Board, the present petitions are filed.
(2.) The former Chief Justice of India Hon'ble Mr. Justice M. H. Beg observed, while deciding case of Ganpat v. Sashikant, AIR 1978 SC 955, about law of interpretation and precedence. It would be worthwhile to consider in extenso what was observed by his Lordship :- "If the quest for certainty in law is often baffled, as it is according to Judge Jerome Frank in "Law and the Modern Mind", the reasons are mainly two : firstly, the lack of precise formulation of even statutory law so as to leave lacunae and loopholes in it giving scope to much avoidable disputation : and, secondly, the unpredictability of the judicial rendering of the law after every conceivable as well as inconceivable aspect of it has been explored and subjected to forensic debate. Even the staunchest exponents of legal realism, who are apt to treat the quest for certainty in the administration of justice in accordance with law, in an uncertain world of imperfect human beings, to be practically always futile and doomed to failure, will not deny the desirability and the beneficial effects of such certainty in law as may be possible. Unfortunately, there are not infrequent instances where what should have been clear and certain, by applying well-established canons of statutory construction becomes befogged by the vagaries, if one may use a possibly strong word without disrespect, of judicial exposition divorced from these canons."
(3.) Then with regard to the observance of the law of precedent it was observed by the Supreme Court in the same judgment referred to above as under :- "Even that certainty and predictability in the administration of justice in accordance with law which is possible only if lawyers and Courts care to scrupulously apply the law clearly declared by this Court, would not be attainable, if this elementary duty is overlooked.";