HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD AFR Reserved Court No. - 20 Case :- WRIT - A No. - 1010 of 2021 Petitioner :- Uttam Chand Rawat Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 7 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Shyam Shanker Pandey Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C. According to the judgment of the Apex Court in the case of K.K. Saksena (supra), twin test is to be satisfied for maintainability of the writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The writ petition would be maintainable against an authority or person only when it is discharging public duty/public function and the matter pertains to public law. Merely for the reason that an authority or a person is discharging public function/public duty would not be amenable to writ jurisdiction unless the action challenged therein falls under the domain of public law. A dispute arising out of Contract or under the common law would not make a writ to be maintainable. The relevant paras of the judgment in the K.K. Saksena (supra) are quoted hereunder:- "1. Within a couple of years of the framing of the Constitution, this Court remarked in Election Commission of India v. Saka Venkata Rao [Election Commission of India v. Saka Venkata Rao, AIR 1953 SC 210] that administrative law in India has been shaped in the English mould. Power to issue writ or any order of direction for "any other purpose" has been held to be included in Article 226 of the Constitution with a view apparently to place all the High Courts in this country in somewhat the same position as the Court of the King's Bench in England. It is for this reason ordinary "private law remedies" are not enforceable through extraordinary writ jurisdiction, even though brought against public authorities (see Administrative Law, 8th Edn., H.W.R. Wade and C.F. Forsyth, p. 656). In a number of decisions, this Court has held that contractual and commercial obligations are enforceable only by ordinary action and not by judicial review. 2. On the other hand, even if a person or authority does not come within the sweep of Article 12 of the Constitution, but is performing public duty, writ petition can lie and writ of mandamus or appropriate writ can be issued. However, as noted in Federal Bank Ltd. [Federal Bank Ltd. v. Sagar Thomas, (2003) 10 SCC 733], 3. It is clear from the reading of the impugned judgment that the High Court was fully conscious of the principles laid down in the aforesaid judgments, cognizance whereof is duly taken by the High Court. Applying the test in the case at hand, namely, that of ICID, the High Court opined that it was not discharging any public function or public duty, which would make it amenable to the writ jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226. The discussion of the High Court is contained in paras 34 to 36 and we reproduce the same for the purpose of our appreciation : (K.K. Saksena case [K.K. Saksena v. International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, 2011 SCC OnLine Del 1894 : (2011) 180 DLT 204], SCC OnLine Del)