Contractual service termination under Articles of Association was not amenable to writ review absent statutory breach or stigma.

A writ petition under Article 226 was held not maintainable to challenge termination of a Managing Director appointed under the company's Articles of Association, because the appointment and removal were contractual rather than statutory. The Court treated Article 73 of the Articles as governing selection and removal, and found no breach of a mandatory statutory provision. The termination order was not stigmatic, and the materials relied upon were treated as part of an administrative decision within the contractual framework. In the absence of statutory infraction, the dispute was held to lie in the contractual field, where the ordinary remedy would be damages rather than writ enforcement of personal service.

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Issues: Whether the writ petition under Article 226 was maintainable to challenge termination of the petitioner's services as Managing Director under the Articles of Association, and whether the impugned termination was vitiated by arbitrariness, stigma, or breach of natural justice.

Analysis: The appointment and removal were traced to Article 73 of the Articles of Association, which governed selection and removal of the Managing Director. The Articles of Association were treated as contractual and not statutory in character. The termination order did not contain any stigma, and the materials relied on by the respondents were treated as the basis for an administrative decision within the contractual framework rather than a statutory infraction. The Court also held that, in the absence of breach of a mandatory statutory provision, the dispute lay in the contractual field where the ordinary remedy would be damages and not writ enforcement of personal service. Section 284 of the Companies Act, 1956 was noted as not having been pressed as a ground for relief.

Conclusion: The writ petition was not maintainable for enforcement of the service contract, and the termination was not liable to be interfered with in writ jurisdiction.

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