Delhi High Court – Orders
Pradeep Solanki vs K. R. Mangalam World School And Ors on 6 April, 2026
Author: Sanjeev Narula
Bench: Sanjeev Narula
$~13
* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
+ W.P.(C) 6986/2019
PRADEEP SOLANKI .....Petitioner
Through: Mr. Nirmal Pandit, Advocate with
Petitioner (in-Person).
versus
K. R. MANGALAM WORLD SCHOOL AND ORS.
.....Respondents
Through: Mr. Kamal Gupta, Mrs. Tripti Gupta,
Mr. Sparsh Aggarwal and Mr.
Siddharth Arora, Advocates for
School.
Mrs. Avnish Ahlawat, SC (GNCTD)
with Mrs. Tania Ahlawat, Mr. Nitesh
Kumar Singh, Ms. Aliza Alam and
Mr. Mohnish Sehrawat, Advocates
for GNCTD.
CORAM:
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJEEV NARULA
ORDER
% 06.04.2026
1. This writ petition is directed against order dated 16th November, 2018,
passed by the Delhi School Tribunal,1 dismissing the appeal filed by the
Petitioner under Section 8(3) of the Delhi School Education Act, 1973.2
Factual Background
2. The Petitioner was appointed as a Chess Coach in the Respondent
School by letter dated 23rd August, 2007. It appears that his engagement was
continued from time to time under subsequent communications dated 31 st
March, 2008 and 1st July, 2009.
3. During service, an FIR bearing No. 340/2015 came to be registered
1
“DST”
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against the Petitioner at Police Station Vikaspuri under Sections 354, 506
and 509 IPC on the complaint of one Ms. Seema Verma. The Petitioner was
arrested in connection with the said case and was released on bail on 17 th
April, 2015.
4. According to the Petitioner, after his release on bail, he reported at the
Respondent School to resume duty but was not permitted to enter the
premises. He asserts that he thereafter sent a letter dated 20 th April, 2015 by
speed post expressing his willingness to rejoin. His grievance is that the
School neither responded to the said communication nor took any formal
decision in writing. He further says that he continued approaching the school
and that on 30th December, 2015 he was orally informed that his services
had been terminated and that he need not report any further.
5. The Petitioner preferred an appeal before the DST under Section 8(3)
of the DSE Act, alleging the said action as illegal and contrary to the Act
and the Rules framed thereunder. By the impugned order dated 16 th
November, 2018, the DST dismissed the appeal.
6. The DST held, in substance, that the Petitioner had failed to establish
that he had, in fact, communicated any intention to rejoin service
immediately after his release on bail; that the alleged letter dated 20 th April,
2015 had not been satisfactorily proved; that even on the Petitioner’s own
showing, he had remained away from the School for several months; and
that the case was one of abandonment of service rather than dismissal or
removal by the School. The DST also held that the appeal was barred by
limitation, taking the view that the cause of action had arisen much earlier
than 30th December, 2015.
2
“DSE Act”
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Petitioner’s Case
7. Counsel for the Petitioner submits that the impugned order is
unsustainable both on fact and in law. He argues, first, that the DST misread
the record and failed to notice that the Petitioner had consistently asserted
that he was prevented from joining duty after release on bail. It is submitted
that the Petitioner had sent a written intimation dated 20th April, 2015 to the
Respondent School stating that he wished to resume duty, and that the DST
erred in discarding that document.
8. It is further submitted that the DST fell into error in treating the
matter as one of abandonment. It is contended that the Petitioner never
intended to sever the relationship of employment. On the contrary, his case
throughout has been that he attempted to resume duty, was repeatedly kept
out, and was ultimately told on 30th December, 2015 that his services had
come to an end. In that view, it is argued, the case was one of termination by
the management and not abandonment by the employee.
9. Counsel submits that the DST was also wrong in computing limitation
from April, 2015. According to him, the relevant cause of action arose only
when the Respondent School made its position explicit on 30th December,
2015 by orally informing the Petitioner that his services stood terminated.
The appeal having been filed on 9th February, 2016 was, therefore, within
the prescribed period.
10. It is further submitted that the Respondent School has taken
inconsistent stands. On one hand, it states that the Petitioner never reported
back and abandoned service. On the other hand, it is now argued that the
Petitioner’s service had effectively come to an end in the background of the
criminal allegations. Counsel submits that these positions cannot stand
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together.
11. He also places reliance on the subsequent judgment dated 11th July,
2024 passed by the Metropolitan Magistrate in FIR No. 340/2015, in which
the Principal of the Respondent School admitted in cross-examination that
the Petitioner was “told not to come to school” when he refused to apologise
to the complainant. Counsel submits that this material goes to the root of the
controversy and demolishes the School’s plea of abandonment.
12. It is also argued that the later acquittal of the Petitioner in the criminal
case reinforces the submission that the action taken against him by the
Respondent School was wholly unfair and was founded on a false accusation
engineered at the behest of the management. Counsel submits that if, in
substance, the Petitioner was terminated from service, the School could not
have dispensed with the statutory safeguards by simply avoiding a written
termination order. The absence of a formal order, he submits, cannot be used
as a device to defeat the protection available under the DSE Act.
Respondent School’s Case
13. Per contra, counsel for the Respondent School defends the order of
the DST and submits that no interference is called for in exercise of writ
jurisdiction. He contends that the Petitioner was engaged only as a Chess
Coach for an optional activity and was never appointed against any regular
sanctioned teaching post. According to him, the Petitioner’s engagement
was purely temporary, ad hoc and contractual, and he was never confirmed
in service. It is further submitted that after the Petitioner was taken into
custody on 4th April, 2015, he never returned to report for duty. The
Respondent School’s case is that the Petitioner did not seek permission, did
not furnish any proper intimation, and remained absent for an extended and
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unexplained period. In those circumstances, according to the School, the
only possible conclusion was that he had abandoned service.
14. Counsel submits that since the Petitioner was never formally removed
or dismissed, there was no occasion to invoke the provisions governing
punitive termination. It is argued that Rule 120 of the DSE Rules applies
where a penalty such as dismissal, removal or reduction in rank is imposed,
but has no application where the employee himself abandons service. He
also supports the DST’s conclusion on limitation. He submits that, even on
the Petitioner’s own case, he was denied entry to the Respondent School
soon after release on bail in April, 2015. If he genuinely believed that the
School was illegally preventing him from joining, he ought to have
approached the DST without delay. Instead, he waited until February, 2016.
This, according to the School, clearly shows that the later date of 30th
December, 2015 was introduced only to somehow bring the appeal within
limitation. He further submits that the alleged letter dated 20 th April, 2015
was rightly disbelieved by the DST. The School has consistently denied
receipt of that letter. It is argued that no satisfactory proof of delivery was
produced before the DST and that the document was sought to be introduced
belatedly. It is also submitted that the Petitioner cannot seek any advantage
from his later acquittal in the criminal case. It is argued that the issue before
this Court is not whether the FIR ultimately resulted in conviction or
acquittal, but whether the Petitioner, in fact, returned to join service or
abandoned the same. Counsel submits that the subsequent criminal judgment
does not alter the legal effect of the Petitioner’s prolonged absence. It is
lastly contended that the findings returned by the DST are findings of fact
based on appreciation of the material before it, and that this Court, in writ
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jurisdiction, ought not to re-appreciate the evidence merely because another
view may be possible.
Analysis and findings
15. The Court has considered the submissions advanced by the parties.
The central issue is not whether the Petitioner was later acquitted in the
criminal case, nor whether the allegations in the FIR were true or false in
every detail. The issue is narrower: whether the record before the DST
justified the conclusion that the Petitioner had abandoned service of his own
accord, or whether the matter required adjudication on the premise that the
School had, in substance, brought the relationship to an end without a formal
written order, amounting to termination.
16. The DST answered that issue against the Petitioner by treating the
case as one of abandonment. In the opinion of the Court, that conclusion is
not free from difficulty; not because the Petitioner’s case stands proved on
this record, but because abandonment, in law, is not a matter of mere
absence. It is a matter of intention.
17. The law on that point is settled. Abandonment or relinquishment of
service is always a question of intention, and such intention is not ordinarily
to be inferred without adequate material. Long absence may, in a given case,
justify such an inference. But absence by itself is not abandonment. The
surrounding circumstances must reasonably point to a conscious decision on
the part of the employee to sever the jural relationship.
18. The decisions in Vijay S. Sathaye v. Indian Airlines Ltd.,3 Rajni
Gupta v. Mother’s International School,4 and Surjan Singh v. Delhi
3
(2013) 10 SCC 253.
4
1987 SCC OnLine Del 455.
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School Tribunal,5 relied upon in the impugned order, do not, in the opinion
of this Court, conclude the matter in the manner assumed in the impugned
order. Those decisions undoubtedly recognise that prolonged unauthorized
absence may, in an appropriate case, amount to abandonment of service, and
that once abandonment is clearly made out, the procedural requirements
attending dismissal or removal do not arise in the same way. But those
authorities do not dispense with the need to first determine whether the
employee’s absence was truly unilateral and whether the record justifies the
inference of an intention to sever the jural relationship. Vijay S. Sathaye
itself emphasises that abandonment is a matter of intention, and also
distinguishes abandonment from termination by noting that termination
involves positive employer action.
19. In the present case, the Petitioner’s consistent stand has not been one
of mere absence. His case, rather, is that upon being released on bail, he
made efforts to rejoin duty, was prevented from doing so, and was thereafter
informed that his services had been brought to an end. Whether this version
ultimately merits acceptance is a separate issue. However, it could not have
been disregarded by treating prolonged absence, in isolation, as sufficient to
infer abandonment of service. The impugned order, in the opinion of this
Court, does not reflect a satisfactory consideration of the Petitioner’s
assertion that he had sought to resume duty but was prevented from doing so
by the employer.
20. Once that principle is kept in view, the difficulty with the impugned
order becomes apparent. The Petitioner’s absence did not begin in a vacuum
or without cause. The Respondent School was aware as to why he was not
5
2016 SCC OnLine Del 6452.
W.P.(C) 6986/2019 Page 7 of 12
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on duty. He had been arrested in connection with an FIR lodged by a co-
employee. He was thereafter released on bail. The dispute between the
parties begins from that point. The Petitioner states he sought to resume duty
and was kept out. The School contends he never came back and simply
abandoned service. In such a situation, the issue of intention could not be
decided merely by counting the months that followed.
21. The Court is unable to fault the DST in treating the alleged letter
dated 20th April, 2015 with circumspection. The said letter did not feature in
the original appeal in any clear or central manner and appears to have been
relied upon at a later stage. Moreover, no satisfactory proof of its dispatch or
delivery was placed before the DST. The DST was, therefore, entitled to
decline to place substantial weight on that document. The Petitioner,
therefore, cannot be permitted to rest his case entirely on the said letter.
22. However, the matter could not have rested there. Even if the alleged
letter dated 20th April, 2015 were to be excluded from consideration, the
DST was still required to examine whether the remaining material on record
was sufficient, in law, to sustain an inference of abandonment. That question
warranted a more careful and considered examination than is reflected in the
impugned decision.
23. The DST appears to have proceeded on the premise that, since the
Petitioner failed to satisfactorily establish the alleged communication dated
20th April, 2015, and there was subsequent silence for several months, an
inference of abandonment necessarily followed. Such reasoning, in the
opinion of this Court, adopts an unduly truncated route to that conclusion. It
does not adequately engage with the legal requirement that abandonment
must be founded upon a clear intention to relinquish service. The inability to
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prove a particular communication may, at best, weaken the Petitioner’s case;
it does not, by itself, establish a conscious or voluntary abandonment of
employment.
24. There is another difficulty. The DST proceeded on the footing that the
cause of action arose in April, 2015, when, according to the Petitioner, he
was first not permitted to rejoin duty. However, the Petitioner’s pleaded case
before the Tribunal was that the Respondent School continued to keep him
in a state of uncertainty and that it was only on 30 th December, 2015 that he
was finally informed that his services had come to an end. Whether that case
was believable or not was a matter for adjudication. But it could not be
disbelieved entirely. The DST could not, in effect, discard the Petitioner’s
case on merits and then adopt that very rejection as the basis for computing
limitation, without first determining the foundational factual issue in a
reasoned manner. Put differently, if the Petitioner’s case is of an oral
termination finally communicated on 30th December, 2015, limitation cannot
be computed on the assumption that the cause of action arose months earlier.
25. There is also one further circumstance which required closer attention.
If the Respondent School genuinely understood the case as one of voluntary
abandonment from April 2015 onward, one would ordinarily expect some
contemporaneous response from the management: a communication calling
upon the Petitioner to report for duty, an explanation for unauthorized
absence, or at least an indication that continued absence would be treated as
abandonment. The record, as presently noticed, does not show any such
contemporaneous step. This circumstance does not, by itself, disprove
abandonment. It does, however, make it unreliable to accept abandonment as
self-evident merely from the lapse of time, particularly when the Petitioner’s
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case was that he had been deliberately kept out. It is in that context that
Rajni Gupta and Surjan Singh must be understood. The School has relied
on these decisions to submit that no enquiry is necessary where the
employee abandons service. That proposition, however, does not dispense
with the need to first establish that the case is truly one of abandonment.
Those decisions also do not lay down that once an employee is absent for
some length of time, abandonment may simply be assumed. They proceed
on the footing that abandonment is first established on facts. They do not
permit the Court or the Tribunal to assume abandonment where the
employee’s case is that he was, in substance, thrown out and thereafter
denied entry.
26. This, in the opinion of the Court, strengthens the need for a fresh look
is the subsequent material now relied upon by the Petitioner, namely the
judgment dated 11th July, 2024 in the criminal case. The Court is not treating
the acquittal, by itself, as determinative of the service dispute. However, the
petitioner relies on that judgment for a different reason. According to him,
the Principal of the school, while deposing in the criminal case, stated that
the Petitioner’s services were terminated when he was asked to apologise to
the complainant and refused. If that statement is indeed borne out by the
record, it would be fundamentally inconsistent with the Respondent
School‘s case of abandonment.
27. The judgment rendered in the criminal proceedings was not placed
before the DST when it decided the matter in 2018. It would, therefore, be
inappropriate for this Court, in exercise of its writ jurisdiction, to finally
adjudicate a disputed service matter solely on the basis of a subsequent
document which the Tribunal had no occasion to consider. At the same time,
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such material cannot be altogether ignored, for, if genuine and properly
appreciated, it bears directly upon the core controversy.
28. There is yet another legal dimension. If the Petitioner’s case
ultimately establishes that his services were brought to an end at the instance
of the employer, albeit without a formal written order, the Respondent
School cannot be permitted to circumvent the mandate of Section 8(2) of the
DSE Act merely by refraining from issuing such an order. The Supreme
Court, in Raj Kumar v. Director of Education,6 made it clear that prior
approval of the Director of Education under Section 8(2) is mandatory
before termination of the services of an employee of a recognised private
school, and that the provision is a safeguard against arbitrary severance.
29. It must, however, be clarified that this issue would arise only upon a
proper determination of the foundational controversy. If the case is one of
abandonment, the case stands on one footing. If it was termination disguised
as abandonment, it stands on another. The DST’s order does not
satisfactorily resolve that anterior question.
30. To conclude, abandonment is a unilateral act attributable to the
employee, whereas termination is a positive act of the employer; the two are
conceptually distinct, as recognised in Vijay S. Sathaye. On the present
record, this Court is not persuaded to return a definitive finding that the
Petitioner has proved termination. Equally, the reasoning adopted by the
DST does not warrant an unqualified affirmation of abandonment. In these
circumstances, a remand would be the most appropriate course.
31. In these circumstances, the Court if of the view that the impugned
order cannot be sustained. The DST will, therefore, have to reconsider the
6
2016 SCC OnLine SC 317.
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matter afresh. It shall examine, first, whether the Petitioner’s conduct,
viewed in the complete factual setting, truly established an intention to
abandon service. In doing so, it shall bear in mind that abandonment is a
question of intention and cannot be inferred merely from absence without
adequate supporting circumstances. Second, it shall consider the effect, if
any, of the later court judgment dated 11th July, 2024 passed in criminal
proceedings, limited to the extent it may contain material relevant to the
Respondent School’s stand on abandonment or termination. Third, if the
DST concludes that the Petitioner was, in substance, terminated by the
school, it shall then examine the legal consequences of Section 8(2) and
Section 8(3) of the DSE Act in the light of the judgment in Raj Kumar.
32. The matter is accordingly remanded to the DST for fresh
consideration, in accordance with law. All contentions of the parties on
merits are kept open. Since the dispute dates back to 2015, it would be
appropriate for the Tribunal to decide the restored appeal as expeditiously as
possible, preferably within a period of three months from the date the parties
appear before it.
33. The petition is disposed of.
SANJEEV NARULA, J
APRIL 6, 2026/as
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