Recently, the Supreme Court recently dismissed special leave petitions filed by Pratap Singh Bist and others against the Delhi High Court's judgments of November 11, 2022 and February 14, 2023, related to the appointments of teachers in the Directorate of Education in Delhi in 2008. However, the Supreme Court expressed reservations about the high court's finding that Public Interest Litigations (PILs) are not maintainable in service matters.

A matter was heard before the division bench of Justice Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta

The petitioners had challenged the validity of these teacher appointments in 2008 through a writ petition filed in 2017, purportedly in the public interest. The High Court, upon considering the affidavit filed by the official respondents, concluded that the private respondents (the appointed teachers) possessed the necessary qualifications and were eligible for the offered positions at the time of their appointment.

The High Court also noted that the private respondents had served for almost 15 years by that point. As a result, the Supreme Court decided not to entertain the special leave petitions against the selection or appointment of the private respondents. It's important to note that the Supreme Court expressed doubts over its earlier 1998 judgment, which had held that PILs are not maintainable in service matters, suggesting that there may be a re-evaluation of this precedent in the future.

However, the bench said that the second reason assigned by the high court, namely, that “PIL is not at all maintainable in service matters” in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in 'Dr Duryodhan Sahu and Others vs Jintendra Kumar Mishra and Others', (1998) "is a debatable issue and the said question of law is kept open, to be gone into an appropriate case".

Case Title: Pratap Singh Bist Vs The Director of the Directorate of Education, Govt of NCT of Delhi & Ors