Allahabad HC calls KGBV contract teaching forced labour, orders UP to create posts within four months
Justice Pankaj Bhatia held at Lucknow that keeping Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya teachers for more than 15 years on 11-month-29-day contracts at an honorarium below semi-skilled wages violates Articles 14 and 23, directed the State to sanction posts and frame service conditions within four months, and ordered Rs 17,000 a month to every KGBV teacher in the meantime.
Teachers who have run Uttar Pradesh's residential schools for the poorest rural girls on year-to-year contracts since 2009 have won sweeping directions from the Allahabad High Court. Sitting at the Lucknow Bench, Justice Pankaj Bhatia held on 29 October 2026 that the State's practice of engaging Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) teachers for 11 months and 29 days at a time, on an honorarium the court said falls below the rate for semi-skilled workers, is “nothing but a form of forced labour prohibited by Article 23”. He gave the State four months to sanction posts, frame service conditions on par with regular teachers up to the Intermediate level and decide the teachers' regularisation claims, and ordered that every KGBV teacher in the State be paid Rs 17,000 a month from the date of the judgment until that is done.
Three petitions, 378 teachers and a contract that expires every academic year
The judgment, marked AFR and reserved on 17 September 2026, disposed of three connected writ petitions. Archana Boodh, a KGBV teacher since 11 January 2010 whose contract was renewed year after year, filed Writ-A Nos. 7335 and 8381 of 2026. Writ-A No. 9015 of 2026 was brought by Reeta Verma and 376 others against the Union of India and 55 other respondents; petitioners 1 to 270 in that case had served for more than ten years, and petitioners 271 to 377 for less. Across the batch, some teachers had been in post for over 15 years and others for two to five years. All sought regularisation and pay equal to what the State gives its own teachers.
Raj Kumar Singh Suryvanshi and Saksham Agarwal argued for the teachers. Anuj Kudesia, Senior Advocate, with Sarvesh Dubey, appeared for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan; P.K. Singh and Saharsh Srivastava, Additional Chief Standing Counsel, for the State; and Ran Vijay Singh, Shailendra Singh Rajawat, Dr Udai Veer Singh, Prashant Kumar Singh, Shivam Sharma and Abhinav Singh for the Basic Shiksha Adhikaris. The court recorded that M.M. Asthana, counsel for the Union of India, stayed away even though the matter was fixed for final hearing, so no submissions were made for the Centre.
The teachers' case began with the scheme itself. The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya Scheme was launched by the Government of India in 2004 under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to give residential schooling to girls from socially, educationally and economically backward sections in rural and remote areas, girls kept out of school by poverty, early marriage, household work, safety fears and discrimination. The Centre initially sanctioned 2,578 KGBVs across 28 States; 75 per cent of seats were earmarked for SC, ST, OBC and minority girls and the rest for families below the poverty line. Teaching and other staff were recruited on contract through a selection process advertised on 10 July 2009 and have been re-engaged every year since, on honorarium. As on 31 March 2024, the KGBVs had 7.07 lakh girls enrolled.
The numbers put before the court were stark. Part-time KGBV teachers are paid Rs 12,790 a month, from which 25 per cent is deducted towards EPF, leaving Rs 9,592 in hand. Part-time teachers teach only during school hours; full-time teachers also act as wardens and work through the day. The petitioners argued that the consolidated honorarium for teachers remains about Rs 11,000 a month. By contrast, a Government Order of 9 April 2026 raised the honorarium of Shiksha Mitras and part-time instructors in the State's primary and upper primary schools from Rs 10,000 to Rs 18,000 a month, and of part-time teachers from Rs 9,000 to Rs 17,000, payable for 11 months a year. A representation by the KGBV teachers asking for Rs 17,000 had gone undecided.
The Government Orders governing their engagement, the teachers said, made their position worse, not better: contracts of 11 months and 29 days with a one-day gap before the next academic year, no renewal if work is found unsatisfactory, termination on a month's notice if services are no longer required and, in extreme cases, without any notice. Many had crossed the age limit for any other job. They pointed to other States: the Director of School Education, Jammu, regularised 22 KGBV teachers in 2016 after five years' continuous service; the Maharashtra Cabinet approved supernumerary posts to absorb 3,276 Samagra Shiksha contract employees with ten years' service as on 30 June 2026; Manipur too had decided to regularise.
The State's answer: no posts, a shared-funding scheme, co-terminus tenure
Kudesia, for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, argued that the scheme was a Central one, funded initially 75:25 between the Centre and the State and later on ratios that vary from State to State. The State implements it through Basic Education Officers using funds from both governments, so no posts exist against which the petitioners could be absorbed. Their tenure, he said, is co-terminus with the scheme, and without sanctioned posts at either level the claim to regularisation had to fail.
From these submissions the court framed three questions: whether teachers doing the same work as regular teachers can be denied regularisation and equal pay merely because they are on contract under a centrally sponsored scheme; whether the absence of sanctioned posts and the Centre-State funding split can be pleaded in defence; and what relief follows.
What the Centre's own documents said about KGBV teachers
Justice Bhatia went through the scheme documents in detail. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan framework of 31 July 2001 aimed at children aged 6 to 14, fixed one teacher for every 40 children and at least two teachers per primary school, and set Centre-State sharing at 85:15 in the Ninth Plan, 75:25 in the Tenth and 50:50 thereafter. The 2004 modifications for girls proposed 500 to 750 residential schools in backward blocks over the Tenth Plan, to be implemented by State Governments, with financial estimates covering salaries of warden-cum-teachers, full-time and part-time teachers. The scheme was revised on 24 March 2014.
A NITI Aayog evaluation of 2 July 2015 found no uniform practice for engaging teachers across States, 77 per cent of teachers dissatisfied with pay, and a wide gap between permanent teachers, who earned Rs 19,162 to Rs 26,382 a month on average, and temporary teachers on Rs 5,624 to Rs 10,584. It recommended a trained cadre of teachers for girls with permanent tenure and higher pay. The Ministry of Education's Samagra Shiksha framework of 12 October 2022 recorded funding at 90:10 for the eight North-Eastern States and 60:40 elsewhere, placed recruitment and service matters within the States' domain with the Centre providing lump-sum support, and asked that qualified teachers be recruited under Section 23 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. It found that only 19 per cent of full-time KGBV teachers and 30 per cent of part-time teachers were regular, that 58 per cent did not stay on campus though the schools are residential, and that teachers travelled 40 to 50 km to schools in deep interiors. Its recommendations were that qualifications, recruitment and service conditions should match any other State-run school even for contract teachers, with full salary as per State norms.
None of this had changed anything on the ground. Even after an NCERT evaluation in 2022-23, the court said, the suggestions remained suggestions, and the teachers continued on a consolidated honorarium. The National Education Policy, 2020, which the court quoted, itself says that teacher recruitment, deployment and service conditions are not where they should be.
Supreme Court authority the court built on
The judgment rests heavily on U.P. Junior High School Council Instructor Welfare Association v. State of U.P., 2026 INSC 117, where the Supreme Court dealt with part-time contractual instructors in Uttar Pradesh's upper primary schools whose honorarium had been fixed at Rs 7,000 in 2013. Justice Bhatia set out the Supreme Court's findings at length: that such instructors possess NCTE qualifications on par with regular teachers; that a contract barring them from any other employment makes them full-time teachers in fact, whatever the label; that continuous engagement for over ten years under a subsisting scheme means posts “stand created or deemed to be created”; that selection under the scheme makes the appointments substantive; that fixing honorarium is a policy decision but cannot be exercised arbitrarily so as to subject teachers to begar; that paying Rs 7,000 permanently is forced labour under Article 23 as explained in People's Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India; and that the State must pay first and recover the Central share later. The Supreme Court had directed Rs 17,000 a month until revision, and periodic revision at least once in three years.
The court also relied on Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 95, where the Supreme Court described a State-employee contract as one between a lion and a lamb, held that signing a standard-form contract is no waiver of fundamental rights, cautioned against mechanical reliance on State of Karnataka v. Umadevi (3), (2006) 4 SCC 1, to legitimise years of ad-hocism, and directed regularisation of contractual Junior Engineers after a decade. It drew on Jaggo v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 1034, on the misuse of temporary labels; Sukhendu Bhattacharjee v. State of Assam, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 529, on legitimate expectation and the State as model employer; Vinod Kumar v. Union of India, 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 330; R. Iyyappan v. Union of India, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 441; and Anjuman Ishaat-E-Taleem Trust v. State of Maharashtra, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1912, for the proposition that quality of teachers is inherent in the Article 21-A right. Sunil Kumar Yadav v. State of Jharkhand, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 470, on para-teachers, and the directions of 15 July 2025 in Rajneesh Kumar Pandey v. Union of India for sanctioning posts of special educators were also noticed.
Applying these, the court found it undisputed that the petitioners were selected through a process and teach children enrolled in KGBVs, and that every study, from the Ministry's own frameworks to the NEP, treats their work as identical to that of regular teachers. There was no material to show otherwise. The plea of no sanctioned posts and co-terminus tenure was rejected: the scheme has run for over two decades, the work is perennial, and Section 8(d) of the RTE Act obliges the State to provide teaching staff. Posts are deemed created on the reasoning of paragraphs 43, 45 and 70(iii) of the Instructor Welfare Association judgment, and the plea that the Centre had not released funds was answered by the pay-and-recover principle in paragraphs 69 and 70(vi).
KGBVs are schools under the RTE Act, and their teachers are denied even Section 24(2)
The court then turned to the statute. KGBVs fall squarely within the definition of a school in Section 2(n) of the RTE Act. Section 7 makes funding a concurrent responsibility, with the Centre providing grants-in-aid, but Section 7(5) makes the State responsible for funding implementation after taking the Central sums and its own resources into account. Section 8 casts on the appropriate Government the duty to provide teaching staff, to ensure good-quality education conforming to the Schedule, and to ensure that children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups are not discriminated against. Children in government and aided schools, the court observed, are taught by well-paid teachers while disadvantaged girls in KGBVs are taught by ill-paid teachers in insecure conditions. “This is a clear discrimination against the disadvantaged students studying in KGBVs.”
Sections 23 to 28 impose the same duties and restrictions on KGBV teachers as on others, including the bar on private tuition, yet KGBV teachers are not even given the protection of the proviso to Section 24(2), which requires a reasonable opportunity of hearing before disciplinary action. Their contracts therefore discriminate by denying them the bare minimum security the Act prescribes. The court also examined the Uttar Pradesh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, 2010. Rule 20 requires the Government to notify terms of service and salary so as to create a professional and permanent cadre of teachers, with pay, pension, provident fund and other benefits at par for similar qualification, work and experience. No such rules have been framed for KGBV teachers; since inception their appointment, pay and conditions have been run by Government Orders.
Purity of means: a laudable end achieved by unconstitutional means
Under the heading Purity of Means, the court accepted that the scheme, from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to Samagra Shiksha, is a laudable initiative that has achieved considerable success, with more than seven lakh girls enrolled, and that it furthers the State's obligations under Article 21-A. The question was whether the means conform to Part III. They did not. The teachers had been paid inadequately, denied security and kept for years on a paltry honorarium without any step towards regularisation, in violation of Articles 14 and 23 and inconsistent with the Directive Principles in Part IV.
Justice Bhatia invoked Chief Justice John Marshall's test in McCulloch v. Maryland, that means must be appropriate, plainly adapted to a legitimate end and consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court's exposition in Minerva Mills Ltd v. Union of India, (1980) 3 SCC 625, that Parts III and IV are two wheels of a chariot and that the goals of Part IV must be achieved without abrogating the means guaranteed by Part III. Engaging teachers for 11 months and 29 days with a one-day break, with contracts providing for non-renewal and termination without notice, and continuing that arrangement for years without providing any security, was held inconsistent with Part III, contrary to the RTE Act and contrary to the Supreme Court's directions, and not something a model employer like the State could justify.
The court concluded that continuous contractual employment for years without creating posts, absorbing the teachers or giving them regular pay scales is forced labour under Article 23, citing paragraphs 54 to 57 and 70(viii) of the Instructor Welfare Association judgment. The honorarium, it said, is less than what is prescribed for semi-skilled workers, and calling it an honorarium was a cruel joke.
Order
The court issued four directions. First, the State Government shall take steps to sanction or create posts of teachers for the KGBVs functioning in Uttar Pradesh, keeping in view the Schedule to the RTE Act, within four months. Second, the State shall frame service conditions for teachers appointed to and working in KGBVs, including teachers who were not petitioners, at par with the conditions prescribed for regularly appointed teachers up to the Intermediate level. Third, the claims of the petitioners and similarly situated KGBV teachers in the State for regularisation against the posts so created shall be considered by the competent authority in accordance with law, having regard to qualifications and length of service, within the same period. Fourth, the honorarium or salary of all KGBV teachers shall be revised periodically to bring it at par with the pay and emoluments of teachers in the State's own and aided schools.
All of these steps are to be completed within four months of the judgment. Until they are, every teacher working in a KGBV, including the petitioners, shall be paid an honorarium of Rs 17,000 a month with effect from 29 October 2026 and shall be entitled to protection of service under Section 24(2) of the RTE Act. The Central Government is responsible for sharing the expenditure as agreed by providing funds to the State, but the State may not plead that the steps cannot be taken until Central funds are sanctioned; it may recover the Central share on the principle of pay and recover. Compliance is to be made within the timeframe fixed. All three writ petitions stand disposed of.