ORDER On or about May, 7, 1981, Alliance Mills (Lessees) Private Limited (hereinfter referred to as the 'Company') the petitioner no. I herein, entered into a contract with the Assistant Director (Supplies), Director of Supplies & Disposals, acting on behalf of the Union of India, for supplying hessian cloth worth Rs. 4,42,145/- to the Commandant, Central Ordinance Depot, Kanpur. Under the terms of the contract, the goods were to be delivered by June 30, 1981. According to the Company, it manufactured the goods as per specification and offered the same for inspection by the Inspecting Authority, as stipulated in the contract on June 11 and June 20, 1980. After obtaining certificate of such inspection, the Company despatched the goods to the consignee on June 30, 1981. The Company then submitted its bills in the prescribed form to the Director-General of Supplies & Disposals and received payment thereof on July 18, 1981. Thereafter, on or about January 16, 1982, the Company received a telegram from the consignee intimating that the goods sent by it had been provisionally rejected, pending final decision. The telegram was followed by a letter dated February 24, 1982 whereby the Company was informed that the entire consignment was rejected. The Company wrote back to say that the consignment was sent only after proper inspection by the Inspecting Authority as per terms of the contract and as such the rejection was unauthorized, illegal and violative of the terms of tile contract. The Company therefore asked the consignee to withdraw the order of rejection. As the Company received no communication from the authorities concerned, it sent a lawyer's notice on April 1982 calling upon the Director-General of supplies & Disposal to dissect the consignee to recall and withdraw his letter dated February 24, 1982. In the meantime on April 18, 1982, the Deputy Director of Supplies had written a letter to the Company asking it to show-cause why the entire cost of the materials supplied by it should not be recovered from its forthcoming bills as the consignment was found sub-standard. 2. In the meantime on April 18, 1982, the Deputy Director of Supplies had written a letter to the Company asking it to show-cause why the entire cost of the materials supplied by it should not be recovered from its forthcoming bills as the consignment was found sub-standard. 2. On receipt of the above letter, the Company and one of its Directors moved this Court by filing this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India praying, inter alia, for a declaration that the rejection of the goods supplied by them were illegal and ultra vires the terms of the contract and for a writ of mandamus restraining the concerned authorities from enforcing the two letters dated 24.2.88 and 8.4.88 and from invoking clause 18 of the conditions of contract (DG.S & D-68-revised) for withholding any payment of the Company in respect of other bills. 3. At the time of the hearing of this petition, Mr. Amjad Ali, the learned Advocate appearing for the respondents, raised a threshold objection as to the maintainability of the writ petition on the ground that the petitioners were trying to seek a remedy arising from an alleged breach of a concluded contract and that such remedy was not available in the writ jurisdiction. In support of the above contention, reliance was placed upon a Division Bench judgment of this Court in the case of Hindusthan Petroleum Corporation v. S. S. Ganeriwalla reported in 91 (1987) CWN 217. 4. In opposing the above contention. Mr. B. N. Sen appearing for the petitioners submitted that the respondents issued the impugned notices in utter disregard of the law laid down by the Supreme Court in the case of Union of India v. Raman Iron Foundry reported in AIR 1974 SC 1265 while interpreting clause 18 of similar contract and as such petitioners could legitimately raise their grievances and seek reliefs through a writ petition. In support of his contention, Mr. Sen relied upon the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dwarakadas Marphatia & Sons v. Bombay Port Trust reported in (1989) 3 Supreme Court Cases 293. Having carefully considered the facts and circumstances of the instant case in the light of the decisions cited at the bar, I find much substance in the contention of Mr. Amjad Ali. 5. Having carefully considered the facts and circumstances of the instant case in the light of the decisions cited at the bar, I find much substance in the contention of Mr. Amjad Ali. 5. The facts and circumstances of the instant case unmistakably prove that that the reliefs claimed by the petitioners stem from a concluded contract. As has been already noticed, the reliefs sought for by the petitioners are for a declaration that the rejection was violative of the terms of the contract and that the Union of India could not invoke clause 18 of the contract. In that context, the decision in the case of Hindusthan Petroleum Corporation (supra) which is based upon consideration of various decisions of the Supreme Court including that in the case of Radhakrishna Agarwal v. State of Bihar reported in AIR 1977 SC 1496 , squarely applies herein. In that case, this Court held: "A right derived from an agreement or a contract may be infringed by breach thereof. In all such cases the remedy available is the usual remedy under the laws, namely specific performance or damages. Irrespective of whether the party committing the breach is a private individual or the State and/or its instrumentalities, in all such cases the parties to the agreement or contract having entered into a contractual relationship they would be governed exclusively by the laws relating to contract. But at the same time a right derived from an agreement with the State may as well be infringed by the State by way of breach thereof but by some administrative action taken in exercise of any statutory power or in exercise of its sovereign power. Simple illustration in our opinion would explain the position. A lease or interest derived under the lease obtained from the State may itself be the subject-matter of acquisition or requisition by the State and such acquisition or requisition would certainly infringe the lease-holders right under the lease. Similarly with ever increasing statutory control over the economic processes it is often to be found that statutory prescriptions are often so far imposed on the terms of an agreement or a contract between the parties, particularly wherein the State or its instrumentality is a party thereto and in such cases the right derived from an agreement may be infringed in exercise of powers under the agreement but subject to the statutory limita1 ions. The best illustrations in this regard are various control legislations like mines and minerals regulations. In this latter group of cases where the right of a citizen is infringed a writ proceeding would be available if it can be established that such infringement is in breach of the law notwithstanding the fact that the right emanates from the agreement. The fundamental distinction in all these cases is that the right to the relief arises not for any breach of the agreement pure and simple but for breach of law." 6. As admittedly, in the instant case, the relief sought arises from the alleged breach of a contract––the right cannot be had or obtained in the writ jurisdiction. The decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Raman Iron Foundry (supra) does not alter the position as it relates to an interpretation of a term of a contract and nothing beyond that. In my considered view, the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dwarkadas Marphatia (supra) has also no manner of application in the facts of the instant case. The case is an authority for the proposition that any action of a public body or public corporation, even if it is under a contract, may be questioned as arbitrary in a proceeding under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, if such decision is detrimental to public interest or is a matter of public law domain. In that case, the decisions of the Supreme Court in the case of Radhakrishna Agarwal (supra) was considered but not dissented from and the observations made in the case of Life Insurance Corporation of India v. Escort Limited reported in (1986) 1 SCC 264 were followed. It will be profitable therefore to extract the relevant passages of the judgment in the case of Escort Limited (supra), the Supreme Court observed as under: "It was however, urged by the learned counsel for the company that the Life Insurance Corporation was an instrumentality of the State and was, therefore, debarred by Article 14 from acting arbitrarily. It was, therefore, under an obligation to state to the Court its reasons for the resolution once a rule nisi was issued to it. If it failed to disclose its reasons to the Court, the Court would presume that it had no valid reasons to give and its action was, therefore, arbitrary. It was, therefore, under an obligation to state to the Court its reasons for the resolution once a rule nisi was issued to it. If it failed to disclose its reasons to the Court, the Court would presume that it had no valid reasons to give and its action was, therefore, arbitrary. The learned counsel relied on the decisions of this Court in Sukhdev Singh. Maneka Gandhi, International Airport Authority and Ajay Hasia. The learned Attorney-General, on the other hand, contended that actions of the State or an instrumentality of the State which do not properly belong to the field of public law but belong to the field of private law an, not liable to be subjected to judicial review. He relied on O'Reilly v. Mackmah, Davy v. Spelthone, I Congress del Partido, R. v. East Berkshire Health Authority and Radhakrishna Agarwal v. State of Bihar. While we do find considerable force in the contention of the learned Attorney-General it may not be necessary for us to enter into any lengthy discussion of the topic, as we shall presently see. We also desire to warn ourselves against readily referring to English cases on questions of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Public Law as the law in Indian in these branches has forged ahead of the law in England, guided as we are by our Constitution and uninhibited as we are by the technical rules which have hampered the development of the English Law. While we do not for a moment doubt that every action of the State or an instrumentality of the State must be informed by reason and that, in appropriate cases, actions uninformed by reason may be questioned as arbitrary in proceedings under Article 226 or Article 32 of the Constitution, we do not construe Article 14 as a charter for judicial review of State actions and to call upon the State to account for its actions in its manifold activities by stating reasons for such actions. For example, if the action of the State is political or sovereign in character, the Court will keep away from it. The Court will not debate academic matters or concern itself with the intricacies of trade and commerce. For example, if the action of the State is political or sovereign in character, the Court will keep away from it. The Court will not debate academic matters or concern itself with the intricacies of trade and commerce. If the action of the State is related to contractual obligations or obligations arising out of the tort, the Court may not ordinarily examine it unless the action has some public law character attached to it. Broadly speaking, the Court will examine actions of State if they pertain to the public law domain and refrain from examining them if they pertain to the private law field. The difficulty will lie in demarcating the frontier between the public law domain and the private law field. It is impossible to draw the line with precision and we do not want to attempt it. The question must be decided in each case with reference to the particular action, the activity in which the State or the instrumentality of the State is engaged when performing the action, the public law or private law character of the action and a host of other relevant circumstances. When the State or an instrumentality of the State ventures into the corporate world and purchases the shares of a company, it assumes to itself the ordinary role of a shareholder, and dons the robes of a shareholder, with all the rights available to such a shareholder. There is no reason why the State as a shareholder should be expected to state its reasons when it seeks to change the management, by a resolution of the company, like any other shareholder. 7. The action of the respondents in the instant case cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have any public law character attached to it so as to make it amenable in the writ jurisdiction. This petition is, therefore, rejected and the Rule issued thereupon discharged. There will be no order as to costs. Rule discharged.