Contractual Label Cannot Deny Pay Parity to Special Teachers Under IEDC Scheme, Rules Allahabad HC
The Allahabad High Court held that Special Teachers appointed under the IEDC Scheme cannot be denied pay parity with regular teachers, rejecting the State's contractual-appointment defence and directing extension of all consequential service benefits within four months.
Twenty-four teachers employed as Special Teachers and Resource Teachers under the Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC) Scheme approached the Allahabad High Court's Lucknow Bench in 2014, seeking pay parity with regular State Government teachers and a full range of consequential service benefits. Justice Irshad Ali, sitting singly, delivered judgment on 6 August 2026, allowing the writ petition and holding that describing an appointment as “contractual” cannot insulate the State from its constitutional obligation to treat employees performing identical duties on equal terms. The court directed the respondents to implement parity in pay scales and all allied service benefits within four months of production of a certified copy of the order.
The Teachers' Claim and the Scheme They Were Appointed Under
The petitioners, qualified Special Teachers holding credentials recognised by the Rehabilitation Council of India, were appointed through District Level Selection Committees to implement the IEDC Scheme — a Centrally Sponsored Scheme introduced in 1974 and revised in 1992 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The scheme's stated object was to integrate children with disabilities into mainstream schooling by placing qualified Special Teachers in ordinary schools rather than segregating disabled children in separate institutions.
Clause 12.3 of the revised IEDC Scheme provided explicitly that Special Teachers would receive “the same scales of pay as available to the teachers of the corresponding category in that State/UT.” Alongside this, the scheme prescribed a special pay of Rs 150 per month in urban areas and Rs 200 per month in rural areas, recognising the distinct character of the work.
Despite the scheme's terms, the petitioners' remuneration was fixed at Rs 6,000 per month as a consolidated honorarium. They contended that they discharged duties covering education, assessment, rehabilitation, counselling and continuous monitoring of children with special needs across multiple Government schools, yet received none of the pay scales, annual increments, pensionary benefits, leave encashment or maternity benefits available to regular teachers performing comparable educational functions.
The petitioners also relied on the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, which came into force on 1 January 1996, and on the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Inclusive Education of the Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) introduced in 2009, both of which, they argued, cast corresponding obligations on State authorities to support qualified Special Teachers with adequate service conditions.
The Gujarat High Court Precedent and Its Fate Before the Supreme Court
A significant part of the petitioners' case rested on the judgment of the Gujarat High Court dated 22 March 2013 in Suo Moto & Others v. Chief Secretary & Others (Special Civil Application No. 33 of 2005 and connected matters). The Gujarat court, examining the same IEDC Scheme, held that Special Teachers visit different schools every day, discharge duties more onerous than ordinary teachers, and that depriving them of service benefits was “clearly arbitrary, discriminatory, bad in law, null and void, unjust, unreasonable, unfair, inequitable.” The Gujarat High Court directed the Union of India to release adequate financial assistance to the State so that benefits admissible to ordinary teachers could be extended to IEDC Special Teachers, with notional effect from the date of regular appointment and actual payment from the date of the order.
The petitioners asserted that the Gujarat judgment attained finality after the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge preferred by the State of Gujarat. They argued that they stood on identical footing with the Special Teachers before the Gujarat court — appointed under the same Central Scheme, possessing similar qualifications, discharging similar duties — with the only distinguishing circumstance being that they served in Uttar Pradesh rather than Gujarat.
The State's Objections and a Subsequent Development
The State respondents contested the petition on several grounds. They submitted that the appointments were expressly contractual, temporary, and co-terminus with the continuance of the scheme, and that by accepting these terms the petitioners were estopped from seeking regular status. The State argued that no permanent cadre of Itinerant Teachers or Resource Teachers had ever been created through statutory rules, that there were no sanctioned civil posts against which the appointments were made, and that mere continuation of contractual arrangements over years could not convert engagement into regular Government service.
On Clause 12.3 itself, the State denied that it created any enforceable right. The respondents characterised the IEDC Scheme as a set of administrative guidelines without statutory force, and contended that implementation of any Central Scheme depends upon financial allocation and policy decisions that fall within the executive domain, beyond the reach of Article 226.
The respondents also sought to distinguish the Gujarat High Court judgment, arguing it was rendered in the peculiar facts of Gujarat and could not govern service conditions in Uttar Pradesh, which are regulated by different statutory rules and administrative frameworks.
Respondent No. 7 raised a further objection based on subsequent developments. After the Supreme Court's judgment in Rajneesh Kumar Pandey and Others v. Union of India and Others, reported in (2021) 17 SCC 1, a fresh verification and recruitment exercise was undertaken. According to respondent No. 7, several of the petitioners had already participated in that process and accepted appointment as Special Educators under office orders dated 6 May 2026. On this basis, it was argued that the petitioners were guilty of suppressing material facts, that the doctrine of approbate and reprobate precluded them from simultaneously pursuing inconsistent reliefs, and that no surviving cause of action remained. The respondents further pointed out that the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, on which the petitioners had relied, stands repealed by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
How the Court Reasoned
Justice Irshad Ali identified the real controversy at the outset: not the qualifications of the petitioners or the nature of their duties (both largely undisputed), but the legal consequence of their appointment under a Centrally Sponsored Scheme and whether describing that appointment as contractual could justify denial of pay parity.
On Clause 12.3, the court accepted that executive instructions ordinarily do not possess statutory force. It then drew a critical distinction: where a State voluntarily adopts a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, receives financial assistance under it, recruits employees exclusively for its implementation, and continuously extracts their services for decades, the State cannot selectively implement only those portions of the scheme that are administratively convenient while ignoring provisions that protect the employees. Selective implementation producing discriminatory outcomes, the court held, cannot be sustained under Article 14 of the Constitution.
The court invoked the doctrine of legitimate expectation. Qualified candidates responded to State-issued advertisements and accepted appointment under a scheme that itself assured pay parity. Having induced the petitioners to serve and having continuously utilised their services for several years, the respondents could not defeat the expectation arising from the very terms of the scheme. The court also applied the principle of promissory fairness: the State's acceptance of Central Government financial assistance under the scheme carried with it an obligation to implement those provisions protecting the scheme's employees.
On the contractual-appointment defence, the court held that constitutional guarantees cannot be defeated merely by the label an employer attaches to an appointment. A contract entered into by the State remains subject to constitutional limitations, and the State cannot rely on contract terms to justify unequal treatment when employees with identical qualifications perform substantially identical duties under the same administrative control. The court found that the petitioners' engagement had not been casual, seasonal or sporadic — their work had continued without interruption for several years — and that the perpetuation of the IEDC Scheme over decades itself demonstrated that the requirement for Special Teachers was permanent in character, even if artificially described as contractual.
The court found the reasoning of the Gujarat High Court in Suo Moto & Others v. Chief Secretary & Others persuasive. Though that judgment is not binding on the Allahabad High Court, Justice Irshad Ali held that judicial discipline ordinarily requires a constitutional court to follow the interpretation placed by another constitutional court on an all-India Scheme when that interpretation has not been reversed by the Supreme Court. No compelling reason to depart was found.
On the respondents' reliance on Rajneesh Kumar Pandey, the court examined the Supreme Court judgment carefully and concluded that it addressed a different question — ensuring appointment of qualified Special Educators in fulfilment of statutory obligations. The Supreme Court in that case itself reproduced Clause 12.3 of the IEDC Scheme and did not hold the clause to be unenforceable, nor did it overrule or disapprove the Gujarat High Court's interpretation. The two decisions, Justice Irshad Ali held, advance the same constitutional goal and create no conflict.
On the argument that subsequent appointments under the post-Rajneesh Kumar Pandey recruitment process rendered the petition infructuous, the court was direct: acceptance of a subsequent appointment cannot extinguish rights that had already accrued during earlier service. The cause of action in the writ petition related substantially to denial of parity during the period the petitioners worked under the IEDC Scheme. Those accrued rights could not be defeated by a later recruitment exercise.
Order
The writ petition was allowed. The court held that denial of parity in pay scales and consequential service benefits to the petitioners solely because their appointments were described as contractual is arbitrary, unreasonable and violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.
The respondents were directed to extend to the petitioners parity in pay scales and service benefits with Special Teachers of the corresponding category in terms of Clause 12.3 of the IEDC Scheme. All consequential service benefits — including annual increments, admissible leave benefits, maternity benefits wherever applicable, continuity of service, and other benefits available to corresponding Special Teachers — are to be extended within a period of four months from the date of production of a certified copy of the order. There was no order as to costs.