JUDGMENT B.D. Gupta, J. - This petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India has come up before us in consequence of an order passed by a learned single Judge referring the petition for decision by a larger Bench. Having heard learned counsel for the parties at some length and having scrutinised the material before us, we are of opinion that this petition must succeed. 2. Petitioner Prabhat Kumar appeared at the High School Examination of 1970. He was a student of the Parker Intermediate College at Moradabad. The centre, where the petitioner appeared at the examination, was situate in the premises of K.G.K. Inter College. In consequence of some information communicated to the Board of High School and Intermediate Education, U.P. (hereinafter referred to as the Board) that unfair means had been adopted by examinees at the aforesaid centre, an Enquiry Committee was appointed which investigated into the complaint of use of unfair means at a meeting held on the 16th of July, 1970. A charge-sheet appears to have been handed over to the petitioner at that meeting. The petitioner's roll number was 134404. The charge-sheet contained allegation of use of unfair means in answering question Nos. 2 (b) and 7 (b) of mathematics first paper. Another examinee, whose roll number was 134405, had answered the same paper at the same centre. The substance of the charge was that the answers recorded by the examinee, bearing roll No. 134405, contained mistakes in answers given to question No. 2 (b) which had striking similarity to the mistakes committed by the petitioner in the answers recorded by the petitioner. The charge in regard to question No. 7 (b) was that even though the answer recorded by the petitioner to the above question was correct, certain symbols used by the petitioner in recording his answers were incorrect. On the basis of the details given above, the charge was that the petitioner had used unfair means in answering the question referred to above, also. After the petitioner was handed over the charge-sheet on the 16th of July, 1970, the petitioner recorded certain answers against the questionnaire incorporated in the charge-sheet. The petitioner admitted similarity in the mistakes in the answer to question No. 2 (b) but added that he could not explain how the similarity occurred. After the petitioner was handed over the charge-sheet on the 16th of July, 1970, the petitioner recorded certain answers against the questionnaire incorporated in the charge-sheet. The petitioner admitted similarity in the mistakes in the answer to question No. 2 (b) but added that he could not explain how the similarity occurred. The further assertion made by the petitioner was that whereas the petitioner had his seat in the front row, the other examinee bearing roll No. 134405 had his seat very close to the petitioner's seat and behind the petitioner's seat in the second row. In regard to question No. 7 (b) , the petitioner's reply was that in his college exercise book, the solution to the question stood recorded in the form in which he had answered it at the examination, and that that was the reason for the mistake in the symbols. It may be added here that the Enquiry Committee, which investigated into the matter on the 16th of July, 1970 appears to have been appointed under bye-law 46 of the Board. This Committee after considering the explanation offered by the petitioner, recorded its conclusion on the 7th of September, 1970 holding that the petitioner, as also the examinee bearing roll No. 134405, had, both, used unfair means in answering the questions referred to above. The recommendation of the said Committee was also recorded along with its conclusion which was to the effect that the result of the examination of both the examinees for the year 1970 be annulled and further that none of them be allowed to appear at the examination to be held in 1971. 3. Under Sub-clause (b) of clause (b) of Chapter VI of the Regulations, the authority to record orders and to award punishment lay with the Examinations Committee. The conclusion recorded by the Sub-committee on the 7th of September, 1970, together with the recommendation made by that Committee, came up for consideration before the Examinations Committee on various dates, viz., 7th, 8th and 9th of September, 1970, and the Examinations Committee, as the record before us shows, whilst annuling the examination of the petitioner and debarring him from appearing at the examination in 1971, gave the examinee, bearing roll No. 134405, the benefit of doubt. The petitioner then approached this Court with the petition which is before us. 4. The petitioner then approached this Court with the petition which is before us. 4. There is no controversy that none of the members forming the Sub-Committee, which investigated into the matter on the 16th of July, 1970, were members of the Examination Committee which passed the order Further, it is also not in controversy that after the Sub-Committee had recorded its conclusion and recommendation on the 7th of September, 1970, no notice or information was given to the petitioner informing him of the conclusions arrived at by the Sub-committee or the recommendation recorded by it in regard to the punishment proposed to be awarded to the petitioner, and that the petitioner was not furnished any opportunity to appear at the Examinations Committee before the said Committee passed the order sought to be impugned by this petition. In this back ground, learned counsel for the petitioner has raised three contentions each of which appears to be well sustained. 5. The first contention raised by learned counsel is that by committing to furnish the petitioner with any opportunity to appear before the Examinations Committee, the Board had contravened the rules of Natural justice. It was urged that the result of the said omission was that the petitioner was altogether denied opportunity either to show cause against the conclusion recorded by the sub-Committee which had investigated in to the matter or to show cause against the punishment recommended by the said Committee. Learned counsel has placed reliance on the principle laid down by the Supreme Court in the case of Gullapalli Nageshwara Rao v. Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation, A.I.R. 1959 S.C. 308. Reference may be made to the observations made in Para. 31 of the judgment of the Supreme Court as reported above. It appears that in the case before the Supreme Court, the Rules were so framed as to impose a duty on the Secretary to hear even though the decision in regard to the matter had to be taken by the Chief Minister. In Para. 31, Subbarao, J. observed as follows:- "This divided responsibility is destructive of the concept of judicial hearing. Such a procedure defeats the object of personal hearing. Personal hearing enables the authority concerned to watch the demeanour of the witnesses and clear up his doubts during the course of the arguments. In Para. 31, Subbarao, J. observed as follows:- "This divided responsibility is destructive of the concept of judicial hearing. Such a procedure defeats the object of personal hearing. Personal hearing enables the authority concerned to watch the demeanour of the witnesses and clear up his doubts during the course of the arguments. and the party appearing to persuade the authority by reasoned argument to accept his point of view. If one person hears and another decides, then personal hearing becomes empty formality. We, therefore, hold that the said procedure followed in this case also offends another basic principle of judicial procedure." In our opinion, the procedure followed in the case before us is exactly what has been condemned by the Supreme Court in the above case, involving what, in substance, amounts to contravention of rules of natural justice. The purpose of appointing a sub-Committee under bye-law 46 appears to be to enable that Committee to make an on the spot enquiry into cases of use of unfair means in the Board's examinations and to examine in detail matters which require careful scrutiny but cannot be disposed of in the meeting of the Board or its Committees. After the on the spot enquiry or enquiry into individual cases in the manner the sub-Committee may consider appropriate, the conclusions recorded by it are no more then tentative because the final authority is the Examinations Committee which may accept the recommendation in whole or in part or may reject it altogether. Further, bye-law 46 does not appear to contemplate that the sub-Committee shall make recommendation to the Board about the quantum of punishment which may be awarded but, assuming that it may do so, the authority which has to decide upon the appropriate punishment and to award the same, is the Examinations Committee. Keeping this in view, it appears manifest that whereas it was no doubt fit and proper that the petitioner be allowed to appear at the sub-Committee enquiring into the matter and defend himself, it was incumbent on the Examinations Committee to afford the petitioner an opportunity of being heard both in regard to the conclusions recorded by the sub-Committee as also the punishment to be awarded. There is no controversy that this was not done in the present case and we have no doubt that the impugned order of the Board, whereby the examination of the petitioner has been annulled and he has been debarred from appearing at the examination in 1971 must be quashed. In arriving at this conclusion apart from the principle recorded by the Supreme Court in the case of Gullapati Nageshwara Rao, A.I.R. 1959 S.C. 308 we find curselves directly supported by the decision of the Supreme Court recorded in the case of Board of High School and Intermediate Education. U.P. Allahabad v. Ghanshyam Das Gupta, A.I.R. 1962 S.C. 1110 : 1962 A.L.J. 776. 6. The second contention raised by learned counsel for the petitioner is that the Board went wrong in construing the facts as warranting the inference, as the only reasonable inference, that the petitioner must have used unfair means. Keeping in view the position of the seat occupied by the petitioner vis a vis the seat occupied by the examinee bearing roll No. 134405, we are of opinion that by reason merely of similarity in answers to certain questions, as recorded by the two examinees, no reasonable person could come to the conclusion, as the only conclusion deducible from the aforesaid circumstance, that the petitioner used unfair means in recording the answers found in his answer book. The possibility that the petitioner may have looked backwards to find out the answer which was being recorded by the examinee bearing roll No. 134405 cannot be excluded, but the greater likelihood would be that examinee bearing roll No. 134405 may have looked ahead and copied the answer which the petitioner recorded in his answer book. In any case, it is impossible to deduce, in the circumstances of this case, as the only reasonable inference that both the petitioner as well as the examinee bearing roll No. 134405 made use of a common source in recording the disputed answers or that both of them resorted to unfair means in answering the questions in controversy. Cases where mass copying may have been resorted to, or cases, for instance like the one the Supreme Court had before it in the Board of High School and Intermediate Education U.P. Allahabad v. Bagleshwar Prasad, 1963 A.L.J. 676, stand on a different footing. Cases where mass copying may have been resorted to, or cases, for instance like the one the Supreme Court had before it in the Board of High School and Intermediate Education U.P. Allahabad v. Bagleshwar Prasad, 1963 A.L.J. 676, stand on a different footing. Learned counsel for the respondent has been unable to point to anything on the record before us to indicate any finding suggesting that mass copying had been resorted to in the room in which the petitioner, along with a larger number of other examinees had their seats. We are of opinion that the Board was wrong in arriving at the conclusion that the only reasonable hypothesis on which the features pointed out in the answers recorded by the petitioner to question Nos. 2 (b) and 1 (b) of mathematics first paper could be explained was use of unfair means. 7. The third contention raised by learned counsel was that keeping in view the substance of the charge against the petitioner, the doubt which the Examination Committee entertained in regard to examinee bearing roll No. 134405, as a result of which doubt the said examinee was exenerated of the charges levelled against him, the logical result was that the petitioner should also have been given the benefit of doubt. In support of his contention, learned counsel has referred to the record of proceedings of the Examinations Committee which contained nothing whatever to make out the reason why the Examinations Committee gave benefit of doubt to the examinee bearing roll No. 134405. In our opinion, keeping in view the charges levelled against the examinee bearing roll No. 134405 and the petitioner, which were identical the finding recorded against the petitioner and the punishment awarded to him is wholly illogical and inconsistent with the benefit of doubt given to the examinee bearing roll No. 134405. 8. Before parting with this case, we would like to record our observations in regard to what admittedly, in the present case, was the procedure adopted by the authorities in the matter of acquainting the petitioner with the charges levelled against him and affording him an opportunity to answer those charges. 8. Before parting with this case, we would like to record our observations in regard to what admittedly, in the present case, was the procedure adopted by the authorities in the matter of acquainting the petitioner with the charges levelled against him and affording him an opportunity to answer those charges. When the petitioner reached the venue, where the sub-Committee was to hold its enquiry on the 16th of July, 1970, the petitioner was handed over a document, a copy whereof purports to be Annexure I to the supplementary counter-affidavit filed on behalf of the Board. This purports to contain a statement of the charge, together with a number of questions which the petitioner appears to have been called upon to answer. It covers four typed pages. The language in which the charge, the questions and other details in the document are couched is sophisticated, if not Sanskritised Hindi, which even fairly well educated person may find somewhat difficult to understand easily. The handing over of a document, like the above to a boy who had appeared at the High School, i.e. a boy presumably in his beams at the threshhold of higher education, without furnishing appropriate time and opportunity to him to understand precisely the contents of the document, is not a fair way of offering a fair opportunity to answer the charges which may very well damage his entire future career. In the present case, the boy did record his answer to the questionnaire the same day and we have no reason to think that any prejudice was caused to the petitioner in this case by reason of the circumstance merely that he was handed over the charge-sheet on the date the sub-Committee was to hold its enquiry just before it began to do so. But we cannot refrain ourselves from observing that the notion of affording an opportunity to answer charges involves the necessity of granting a fair opportunity which would mean that some reasonable time, clearly depending upon the circumstances of each case, should be given to the person called upon to answer the charges, and that a procedure involving handing over of the chargesheet and calling for an answer to the charges immediately thereafter cannot be considered appropriate for satisfying the requirement of offering a fair opportunity. 9. 9. For the reasons given above, we allow this petition and direct the issuance of a writ of certiorari quashing the order of the Board of High School and Intermediate Education, U.P. dated the 23rd of November, 1970 substance whereof was communicated to the petitioner by the Principal of the Parker Intermediate College, Moradabad by the latter's letter dated the 18th of January, 1971, copy whereof constitutes Annexure 2 to this petition. Further, let a writ of mandamus issue to the aforesaid Board directing it to declare forthwith the result of the petitioner of the High School Examination, 1970. The petitioner shall be entitled to his costs of this petition from the first respondent.