departmental appeals have been allowed and they reinstated in service, the Petitions have not been amended so as to delete their names and they have continued to remain on the record as Petitioners. Several Petitions are in identical terms, if not, almost exact copies of other Petitions. No attempt has been made in such matters to distinguish the case of one Petitioner from the other. Apart from contesting the legal validity of the impugned orders, hardly any one has even stated in his Petition that he was not involved in the situation which has led to clause (b) or clause (c) of the second proviso to Article 311 being applied in his case. There is no allegation of mala fide against the authority passing the impugned orders except at times a more bare allegation that the order was passed mala fide. No particulars whatever of such alleged mala fides have been given. Such a bare averment cannot amount to a plea of mala fides and requires to be ignored. In this unsatisfactory state of affairs go far as facts are concerned, the only course which this Court can adopt is to consider whether the relevant clause of the second proviso to Article 311(2) or of an analogous service rule has been properly applied or not. If this Court finds that such provision has not been properly applied, the Appellant or the Petitioner, as the case may be, is entitled to succeed. If, however, we find that it has been properly applied, the Appeal or Petition would be liable to be dismissed, because there are no proper materials before the Court to investigate and ascertain whether any particular government servant was, in fact, guilty of the charges made against him or not. It is also not the function of this Court to do so because it would involve an inquiry into disputed questions of facts and this Court will not, except in a rare case, embark upon such an inquiry. For these reasons and in view of the directions we propose to give while disposing of these matters, we will
