Neeraj Kumar Rai and Others v. State of U.P. and Others
Background
The appellants were B.Ed. and TET-qualified teacher candidates who were declared ineligible for appointment in Uttar Pradesh because a 2011 National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) notification newly required 50% marks in graduation: a requirement that did not exist when they had taken admission to their B.Ed. course based on having 50% marks in post-graduation instead. The Allahabad High Court upheld their exclusion, even though similarly placed candidates in Rajasthan and Uttarakhand had successfully challenged the identical requirement in their respective High Courts, with NCTE itself agreeing in those cases not to enforce the graduation-marks cutoff retrospectively.
Decision Breakdown
Before the Supreme Court, the Additional Solicitor General representing NCTE fairly conceded that the appellants should be treated the same as the candidates covered by the Rajasthan and Uttarakhand High Court judgments, which NCTE had already accepted. The Supreme Court agreed there was no reason to deny the appellants the same relief, and directed that if the appellants or other similarly placed persons were entitled to further relief consistent with those two High Court rulings, they could place their claims before the concerned authorities, who must decide within one month. It also directed NCTE to issue a clarificatory notification within a month to resolve the ambiguity it had created. The appeal was disposed of on these terms.
Lesson Learnt
A regulatory body cannot retroactively tighten eligibility requirements to exclude people who already met the rules in force when they enrolled in a course, and once an authority concedes parity for similarly situated people in other states, courts will extend the same fairness to litigants raising the identical grievance.