Administrative Law

Naraindas Indurkhya v. State of Madhya Pradesh

AIR 1974 SC 1232

Facts

The State Government prescribed certain textbooks for school classes.
Publishers challenged this, arguing that the required statutory procedure was not followed.
The law required consultation with the Board of Secondary Education before prescribing textbooks.
Instead, the matter was effectively dealt with by the Chairman, not the Board as a body.

Whether the State Government’s textbook notification was valid when the Board itself had not properly recommended/considered the matter.

The State can prescribe textbooks through executive/administrative power if it does not violate anyone’s legal or fundamental rights.
But where a statute lays down a procedure, that procedure must be followed.
If consultation with a statutory Board is required, recommendation by the Chairman alone is not enough unless validly authorised.
Sub-delegation must be made in the manner prescribed by the parent statute.

The Court accepted the broad principle from Ram Jawaya Kapur: the Government does not always need a specific statute to take administrative action like prescribing textbooks.
But that did not save the notification here.
Once the relevant Act required consultation with the Board, the Government had to follow that statutory safeguard.
The Board was not a mere formality.
Its consultation mattered because textbook prescription affects students, schools, publishers and the academic system.
The Government could not treat the Chairman’s recommendation as equivalent to the Board’s recommendation.
The Board could delegate functions to the Chairman only by properly made regulations.
A simple resolution or informal practice was not enough.
Therefore, the Chairman’s individual recommendation could not legally replace consultation with the Board.
MP Jain explains this clearly: the notification was quashed because the recommendations made by the Chairman alone could not be regarded as recommendations by the Board, since the Board had not validly assigned that function to the Chairman through regulations.
The case also connects to publication: where syllabi must be published before textbooks are prescribed, publication means making them known to the academic world, not just communicating them internally to officials.

The Supreme Court quashed the textbook notification.
The Government had power to prescribe textbooks generally, but it failed to follow the statutory procedure.
The case is important for two principles:
executive power is wide, but cannot override statutory requirements;
consultation/sub-delegation must be done in the exact manner required by law.
Use this case for: procedural ultra vires where statutory consultation is bypassed through an unauthorised delegate.