RAM PARSHAD Vs. INDIAN INSTITUTE OF BANKERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE main question which we are called upon to decide in this petition is whether the Indian Institute of Bankers (hereinafter referred to as 'the Institute'), a company registered under the Indian Companies Act, is an instrumentality of the State within the meaning of Art.12 and/or Art.226 of the Constitution of India?

(2.) ALMOST two decades back, a learned single Judge of this Court held in an unreported judgment in Virinder Kumar Kaura v. Indian Institute of Bankers, Civil Writ Petition No.1116 of 1971, decided on March 16, 1972, that the Institute being a company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act was a private body; it had no statutory character and, therefore, it was not amenable to writ jurisdiction of the High Court under Art.226. There has since been a phenomenal development of the law with regard to the concept of the agency or instrumentality of the State. It is no longer possible to justify the finding that the Institute is not amenable to the writ jurisdiction of the High Court merely on the ground that it is a public limited company incorporated under the Indian Companies Act. Several bodies incorporated under the Companies Act or registered under the Societies Registration Act or some other Acts have been held to be agency or instrumentality of the State. The test is not how a particular corporation or company or other body is brought into existence but whether it is, in fact, to borrow the words of the Supreme Court "the third arm of the Government."

(3.) THE petitioner is a clerk in the State Bank of Maharashtra posted at Chandigarh. He appeared in CAIIB Part -I examination held by the Institute in May, 1986. The Institute imposed a three -fold penalty on the petitioner on the ground that his answer book contained material which had either been copied from another examinee or the same had been copied from a common source by the petitioner and some others. The penalties were that his candidature for the examination was cancelled, he was debarred from appearing in any examination held by the Institute up to May 31, 1991, and his name was to be reported to the bank in which he was serving. The petitioner challenged the imposition of the above penalties through the present writ petition under Art.226 seeking a writ of mandamus directing the respondent to declare his result and if he was found to have passed, to treat him as such with effect from the date of examination and to remove the other penalties imposed by the Institute.