MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed the School Education and Higher Education secretaries to instruct the authorities to pass 'speaking' orders and not evasive ones.
Justice S M Subramaniam observed that the authorities, who are at decision-making levels, should assign reasons for arriving at the decisions while issuing orders. "Vague or non-speaking orders cause needless issues between concerned parties and results in filing of unnecessary petitions in court. Due to this, valuable judicial time is being wasted," he added. Such cases are only remanded back to authorities and would cause hardship to litigants as well," the judge said.
He suo motu impleaded School Education and Higher Education secretaries and directed them to issue consolidated instructions to all authorities under the department to ensure that the disputes between schools and teachers and other employees are resolved by passing reasoned orders and by affording sufficient opportunities to parties concerned.
The observations were made while allowing a petition filed by a school principal against an order passed by the Inspector of Matriculation Schools in an issue raised by an ex-employee of the school seeking refund of deducted salary.