Chandigarh, October 27
For 23 years, DAV College lecturers waited for the high court to hear them. Finally, when their petitions came up this month, the court indicated that it was just too late for it to do anything.

Over the years, meanwhile, some of the petitioners had retired, and many others are dead. The case is one of the two lakh cases pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In many cases, the petitioners are no more alive. So, when these cases are suddenly listed, the counsels are often at a loss in the absence of complete records or instructions.

The delay tends to change the course of the outcome as well. Here’s how: SN Teltia and another petitioner had moved the High Court against the DAV College Managing Committee and other respondents in 1989. Their petition was followed by two others in 1990 and 1991.

In all the three cases, the petitioners, working as lecturers in DAV colleges across Punjab and Haryana, and that the managing committees of the colleges, constituted under the Universities Act, were competent to discharge day-to-day functions of the institutions, since DAV Colleges were affiliated to the universities in Punjab and Haryana.

The petitioners said the DAV Managing Committee and Trust, New Delhi, was not competent to carry out day-to-day functions; and that it was a non-statutory body. It should be directed not to interfere in the day-to-day functions of the institutions.

Division Bench of Chief Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain said: “Admittedly, all these petitioners have since retired and are no more working in these colleges. Some of them had died as well. Because of this association of the circumstances, they are no longer members of the governing bodies as well. In these circumstances, it is not necessary to deal with the issued raised. Leaving this issue open, we dispose of these writ petitions as infructuous”.

The High Court will now have three cases less to deal with.