Calcutta HC asks city school's board of governors to refrain from decision-making

The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the board of governors at La Martiniere schools here to refrain from taking any decision on the management of the institutions till a suit over sacking of nominated board members is disposed.

The court verbally observed that the principals of La Martiniere for Boys' and La Martiniere for Girls' will run the show till a verdict is given in the case.

The existing board cannot remove or appoint any person as a governor to the board, Justice Arindam Sinha ruled.

La Martinere schools, which happen to be one of the oldest and most prestigious English-medium institutions in the city, is run by a board of governors, of whom two are ex-officio members, while the other four are nominated by the ex-officio members for a year.

Lawyer Joy Saha, who represented the four deposed nominated members, submitted before Justice Sinha that the two ex-officio governors had terminated the membership of four nominated members illegally on June 19.

At present there are two ex-officio members in the board of the schools, who terminated the four co-opted governors in June, much before their term ends in next March.

The dismissal of four co-opted governors, who have equal powers as that of the ex-officio members of the governing board, was illegal, Saha said.

Counsels Saktinath Mukherjee and Partha Sengupta, who represented the school management, submitted that the grievances of the four ousted governors were personal in nature and cannot be termed as a suit under section 92 of Civil Procedure Code.

Section 92 of CPC deals with alleged breach of any express or constructive trust, created for public purposes, which are charitable or religious in nature.

They also claimed that the appointment of the four co-opted members was illegally done in March and this was merely corrected in June.

Former Kolkata Bishop Probal Kanto Dutta was one of the ex-officio governors who had appointed the four in March.

Following Dutta's transfer in the second week of June, Paritosh Canning was appointed as the new bishop by the Church of North India.

Canning, as the new ex-officio member along with the other governor Swarup Bar, removed the four members and decided to replace them with new governors