Bombay HC regularises Model College staff kept on 11-month contracts since 2011, orders UGC pay scale
The Aurangabad Bench held that Maharashtra, which sat on university proposals to sanction posts for over a decade while directing yearly temporary appointments, must treat the posts as deemed approved, regularise the teaching and non-teaching staff of the Ghansawangi and Hingoli Model Colleges, and pay arrears for three years before the petitions were filed.
Teachers and support staff at two UGC-backed Model Colleges in Marathwada, re-hired on 11-month contracts with a technical break every year since 2011 and 2012, are to be regularised and paid on the university and UGC pay scale, the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court ruled on 29 October 2026. A division bench of Justice Kishore C. Sant and Justice Jitendra Jain held that proposals to sanction their posts, sent by the universities to the State Government in 2011 and 2014 and never decided, must be treated as approved, and rejected the State’s case that its liability for the colleges was frozen at Rs 1 crore a year for salaries. Justice Jitendra Jain, who wrote the judgment, ended it with a formal expression of displeasure at a State that had ignored two earlier orders of the court for more than five years.
Five petitions, two colleges, and a lead matter filed in 2016
The lead petition, Writ Petition No. 4724 of 2016, was filed by Kannulal Asaram Vitore and seven other assistant professors at the Model College, Ghansawangi, in Jalna district, against the State of Maharashtra, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, and the college. They sought a mandamus directing the university to regularise them with permanency and consequential benefits. Heard with it were Writ Petition No. 5134 of 2016 by a head clerk and three peons of the same college, Writ Petition No. 7009 of 2023 by Dipak Rangnath Kamble, its assistant librarian, Writ Petition No. 5111 of 2019 by five assistant professors of the New Model Degree College, Hingoli, under Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, Nanded, and Writ Petition No. 7304 of 2020 by Murlidhar Shrirangrao Shinde, appointed in 2012 to teach Applied Biotechnology at Hingoli. Mr. N.B. Khandare, Senior Advocate, led for the Ghansawangi staff, Ms. Pradnya Talekar for the Hingoli teachers and Mr. S.B. Ghatol Patil for Mr. Shinde. Mr. A.B. Girase, Government Pleader, defended the State, with Mr. U.S. Malte and Mr. S.S. Tope for the universities.
A scheme in which the State promised to meet the entire recurring cost
The Model Colleges trace back to a UGC expert committee report, prepared after an announcement by the then Prime Minister, for 374 such colleges in districts with a low Gross Enrolment Ratio. As the court summarised it, the report envisaged constituent colleges of the local university, maintained by it academically, administratively and financially, and designed to evolve into autonomous colleges within five years. Capital costs were to be shared between the Centre and the State; the recurring expenditure was to be borne entirely by the State. The committee budgeted Rs 1 crore for salaries and Rs 50 lakh for running costs at a teacher-student ratio of 1:20. In June 2011 the UGC released Rs 1.33 crore of an approved Rs 2.67 crore grant to the Aurangabad university for the Ghansawangi college.
Maharashtra’s Government Resolution of 14 March 2013 permitted Model Colleges in seven districts, put the set-up cost at Rs 8 crore shared one-third by the Centre and two-thirds by the State, and fixed the annual expense at Rs 1.5 crore, to be borne by the State. It said the college’s employees would be university employees and that the university would send the State a proposal for approval of the staff. From 2011 the university advertised assistant professor posts for 11 months every year and issued letters describing the posts as purely temporary, on a consolidated salary, with no claim to permanency, reissued each year after a technical break. After ten to twelve years, a representation for regularisation went unanswered.
Two earlier benches had already run out of patience
The judgment reproduces an order of 17 February 2026 by a bench of Justice Sant and Justice Ghodeswar, which recorded with evident shock that the Government had taken no steps towards permanency or funding and had instead filed affidavits pleading want of funds. That order quoted a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipankar Datta, as he then was, with Justice Mangesh Patil, which on 30 September 2021 had asked the Government to report on the feasibility of sanctioning teaching posts by 5 January 2022, a direction the present bench found uncomplied with even in February 2026. Only after the February order did the State offer, by affidavit, to approve the posts, subject to the Rs 1 crore salary cap in the 2013 resolution.
What the two sides argued
Mr. Khandare said his clients were qualified and were appointed through advertisements and a committee that included the Vice-Chancellor, the Director of Higher Education and the Principal. The Model College was part of the university, so its employees formed one class with other university staff yet were paid far less for the same work, offending Articles 14 and 16; the State had directed the university not to make them permanent. He relied on Dharam Singh v. State of U.P., Jaggo v. Union of India and Bhola Nath v. State of Jharkhand, and argued that Sections 76 and 77 of the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, and Sections 102 and 103 of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016, govern appointments to temporary vacancies, such as a maternity-leave gap, not appointments for a temporary period extended again and again. At worst the appointments were irregular, not illegal, and under Somesh Thapliyal v. Vice Chancellor, H.N.B. Garhwal University signing a take-it-or-leave-it appointment letter could not be held against the teachers. Ms. Talekar said the State had undertaken to bear all recurring expenses and could not now stop at the 2013 figure, that the posts were deemed sanctioned after a decade of pendency, and that the autonomy contemplated by the UGC report was academic, not financial. Mr. Ghatol Patil said his client was still working without pay.
Mr. Girase argued that the colleges were designed to stand on their own feet within five years, so State assistance was for that period only. The petitioners were not teachers as defined in the 1994 or 2016 Act, had not been appointed under those Acts by a duly constituted committee, and had accepted letters excluding permanency. A UGC letter of 3 September 2009, with its format of undertaking, limited the State’s commitment to Rs 1.5 crore; enough colleges now existed in these districts and Model College enrolment was dwindling. The court could neither create posts nor order absorption, and under Section 8(1) read with Section 5(9) of the 1994 Act no post could be created without the State’s prior approval. He cited Mahatma Phule Agriculture University, Aravali Golf Club v. Chander Hass, Union of India v. ILMO Devi and others, and Leena Jain against retrospective pay scales. Mr. Tope said the petitioners had not been selected under Section 105 of the 2016 Act and worked on a clock-hour basis; Mr. Malte said the Hingoli teachers had been relieved in April 2019 and never challenged it. On a query from the bench, the Government Pleader fairly accepted that the UGC scheme made no provision for a college that failed to become financially independent in five years.
The respondents’ own affidavits did much of the petitioners’ work
The Nanded university, through Dr. Vitthal More, swore that it had proposed the required posts in 2011 and 2014, that the State had not sanctioned them, and that staff were therefore appointed temporarily under Section 77 of the 1994 Act and Section 103 of the 2016 Act. Dr. Nalini Tembekar, Joint Director of Higher Education, accepted that the appointments were made in accordance with both Acts, albeit temporarily, and the Aurangabad university swore to an express State direction not to appoint on a regular basis. The UGC’s affidavit, by Dr. Supriya Dahiya, Education Officer, said the Hingoli teachers had been appointed to the very posts the State was required to sanction under the 2013 resolution, that the workload was identical to permanent staff while salaries were meagre, and that by not appointing regular teachers the university had played a fraud on the UGC. A State affidavit of 27 July 2026 by Dr. Pankaja Waghmare supplied the numbers: 577 students at Ghansawangi, requiring 28 teaching posts at 20:1, and 629 at Hingoli, requiring 31.
A temporary vacancy is someone else’s chair, not a post that never had an occupant
The bench framed two issues: whether the petitioners were entitled to regularisation, and whether to the applicable pay scale from appointment. It first rejected the contention that the appointments fell outside the two Acts. The advertisements specified the number of posts, split them between reserved and open categories and promised university pay scales; nobody disputed qualifications. Yearly extension after a short break showed a continuing need, and the State had never said the proposals would be refused, which entitled the petitioners to invoke promissory estoppel or, failing that, legitimate expectation. Renewing the same people year after year with a break was, in the bench’s words, “indirectly doing what is otherwise prohibited directly”.
The phrase temporary vacancy in Section 77, the court held, takes its colour from the preceding word on: it describes a post whose holder is unavailable for a period. Section 103(1) of the 2016 Act confirms this by listing resignation, leave or any reason whatsoever as the causes, words to be read ejusdem generis. Nothing showed anyone had occupied these posts before the petitioners. Working full time and doing a regular teacher’s work by the respondents’ own admission, they fell within the definitions of teacher and university teacher in Section 2(41) read with Section 2(34) of the 1994 Act and Sections 2(61) and 2(68) of the 2016 Act, and the same reasoning applied to the non-teaching petitioners. The objection to the selection committees failed because Section 111 of the 1994 Act and Section 143 of the 2016 Act save a committee’s acts despite a defect in its constitution, a rule the bench likened to the corporate-law doctrine of indoor management, and because the committee in the lead petition comprised the very members the statutory committees include. The State’s letter of 2 August 2014 directing temporary appointments while the proposals were pending was itself an admission that the appointments conformed to the Act. The decade of silence was administrative inertia of the kind the Supreme Court deprecated in IFGL Refractories v. Orissa State Financial Corporation, and refusing to decide while insisting on temporary appointments, then arguing that those were not appointments under the Act, was contradictory conduct the court called highly deplorable.
Which provision governs, and who is the management
Under the proviso to Section 2(20) of the 1994 Act the Government that establishes or maintains a college is its management; the Model Colleges were set up by the Centre and the State, so the State is the management, and Section 5(9) makes it the university’s duty to create posts with the State’s prior approval. Section 8(1)(a), on which the State relied, bars the university from creating new posts without approval. The court distinguished it from Section 5(9), which lacks the word new: a post for a teacher of Artificial Intelligence added to a college that has a Mathematics teacher is a new post under Section 8(1)(a); posts created when a college is first set up fall under Section 5(9). No document showed the petitioners’ posts existed before their appointment, and the approval sought under Section 5(9), pending so long, stood deemed granted, the more so since the State now admitted it was ready to sanction the posts. The appointment letters did not bind the petitioners: quoting paragraphs 42 and 43 of Somesh Thapliyal, the court held that a public employee cannot ordinarily choose the terms on which he serves and is not estopped from challenging conditions that do not conform to statute. A Government Resolution of 22 May 2026 raising the pay scale, though prospective, recognised that the teachers had been underpaid.
Rs 1.5 crore was a projection, not a ceiling
The Government Pleader’s reading of the UGC scheme, that bearing 100 per cent of recurring expenses meant 100 per cent of Rs 1.5 crore, was rejected. The figure was an estimate made for all districts in 2011 before any college existed; the scheme committed the State to the entire recurring cost, and had the obligation been capped it would have said who bore the excess. The undertaking the State furnished in 2011 went further: two-thirds of the non-recurring cost, Rs 1 crore in excess, and the entire recurring expenditure including salaries and future appreciation. The bench called this “akin to a sovereign guarantee given by the State”, and reconciled the two documents by treating salaries up to Rs 1 crore as governed by the 2013 resolution and anything beyond by the undertaking. The court added: “Financial constraint is no ground for not paying salary”. A State bound to realise economic and social rights progressively cannot retreat from them, the bench said, invoking the doctrine of non-retrogression. Nor could the five-year autonomy target justify a cap: the State could not starve a college of the means to stand on its feet and then blame it for failing to, and its charts showing private colleges gaining students while Model College enrolment fell drew the response that the reason was obvious.
On the Constitution, the bench held that Model College teachers could not be treated differently from teachers in other colleges of the same university, since the work and the qualifications were the same and Model Colleges were constituent colleges of the university. Denying them regularisation and the UGC scale violated Article 14; as public servants under Section 25 of the 2016 Act they had been denied equal opportunity under Article 16; a decade of sitting on proposals breached Article 38; Article 39’s guarantee of equal pay for equal work reaches two men, or two women, doing the same work in different colleges; paying a consolidated sum for so long breached Article 47; and salary entitlements withheld by keeping proposals undecided were property within Article 300A, taken without authority of law.
One year is the reasonable time, and after that the posts stand approved
Neither Act fixes a time within which the State must decide a university’s proposal, so the power had to be exercised within a reasonable time, a proposition the bench drew from Adjudicating Officer, SEBI v. Bhavesh Pabari and Mansaram v. S.P. Pathak. Looking to Section 77, which contemplates filling a temporary vacancy for up to a year, and to the UGC rule limiting contractual appointments to one session, the court fixed one year from receipt as the reasonable period for a college at its inception. The 2011 and 2014 proposals remained undecided at the end of 2026 without explanation. Relying on its own ruling in D.G. Ruparel College v. State of Maharashtra, where silence beyond a reasonable time raised a presumption of approval under the MEPS Rules, the bench held the proposals deemed approved. That disposed of the State’s authorities against court-created posts: paragraph 3 of the 2013 resolution itself said the university would create the posts and forward them for approval, it had done so, and the court was concerned with the State’s failure to approve, not with creating anything. To sit on a proposal for a decade and then argue that the court cannot direct creation of posts was approbation and reprobation.
The court drew on Rattan Lal v. State of Haryana, which condemned hiring ad hoc teachers each year and sacking them before the summer vacation, and on State of Haryana v. Piara Singh. Bhola Nath, Jaggo and Dharam Singh, though they concerned sanctioned posts, supported relief since the posts here were deemed sanctioned; so did Umadevi, since the appointments were not illegal, eligibility was undisputed and the UGC itself had disapproved the State’s course. The bench noted the Madras High Court’s relief to Tamil Nadu Model College teachers in S. Ramesh v. Bharathidasan University and quoted Sheo Narain Nagar on Umadevi being misused as a tool to refuse regularisation. Applying State of Jharkhand v. Brahmaputra Metallics and Army Welfare Education Society v. Sunil Kumar Sharma, the court held that the pending proposals, the State’s commitment in the 2013 resolution, its direction to appoint temporarily and the universities’ acceptance that the appointments were lawful together amounted to an assurance that the posts would be sanctioned, so that both promissory estoppel and legitimate expectation supported relief. The plea that the Hingoli teachers had been terminated in April 2019 was rejected because the court’s order of 24 July 2019 recorded that they were teaching.
Order
Treating older claims as barred by limitation, the court limited back pay to the three years before each petition was filed and confined regularisation to petitioners still in employment. It ordered that the petitioners be entitled to fixation of salary in the pay scale applicable to similar posts under the university or UGC scale from their dates of appointment, with actual monetary benefit from three years before filing until their employment continues; that petitioners in continuous service up to the date of the order be regularised on the conditions applicable to the university’s other teachers and non-teaching staff from their initial appointment; that the State pay the arrears within six months without interest, with interest at 6 per cent a year on any delay beyond that; and that the State and the universities pass orders regularising the petitioners and specifying the pay scale applicable to similar posts under the respective universities and UGC guidelines.
Recording its displeasure, the bench listed the State’s failures: acting contrary to its undertaking, disregarding the court’s directions for more than five years, sitting on the sanction proposals for more than a decade, and directing the universities to act contrary to the 1994 and 2016 Acts. Rule was made absolute in those terms, the petitions were disposed of, and pending civil applications were disposed of. The judgment, reserved on 26 October 2026, was pronounced on 29 October 2026.