The college was entitled to let him go and should never have hired him: Karnataka High Court orders Rs 12 lakh in equity
Justices D.K. Singh and H. Shanthi Bhushan distinguish disciplinary dismissal from cessation of entitlement for want of a prescribed qualification, and make the institute pay for appointing an ineligible teacher.
A private engineering college in Hassan appointed a civil engineering lecturer in February 2011 on the strength of a first-class bachelor's degree. The regulations that made a master's degree essential for the job had been notified eleven months earlier. Four years later, after the university inspected, the college told him to acquire an M.E. or M.Tech; he did not, and it relieved him. The Education Appellate Tribunal and a Single Judge held the removal bad for want of a disciplinary enquiry. A Division Bench has now reversed them both — and directed the college to pay him Rs 12 lakh.
A qualification that changed before the appointment
The appellant institute is a private engineering college at Hassan, established in 2008 and affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University. The respondent was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering on 7 February 2011 and joined three days later, holding a first-class B.E. in civil engineering.
When he took up the post, a first-class bachelor's degree in the appropriate branch was the qualification prescribed by the All India Council for Technical Education. But the Council, exercising its power under Section 10(1)(i) of the AICTE Act, 1987, had revised the norms for teachers in technical institutions by a gazette notification of 5 March 2010. The revised regulations recognised only three teaching designations — Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor — and prescribed, as the minimum qualification for teaching undergraduate engineering courses, a B.E. or B.Tech together with an M.E. or M.Tech in the relevant branch with first class or an equivalent qualification.
The university wrote to the institute in January and February 2015 directing it to ensure compliance. The institute issued a general notice in February 2015 to all faculty holding only undergraduate qualifications, telling them that to continue in teaching positions they had to pursue a master's degree, and followed it with a specific notice to the respondent. Three years were allowed to acquire the degree.
He neither responded to the notices nor took any step to enrol in an M.E. or M.Tech programme, and did not furnish the undertaking required by the university's procedure for in-service faculty seeking higher qualifications. In May 2015 the institute issued a relieving order, on the record solely on account of his lack of qualification.
His own account of the period before that order is different in emphasis. He had worked as a Lecturer until 31 July 2014. From 1 August 2014, he said, his name was removed from the attendance register and he was assigned no teaching work; he made a representation that month questioning this. The institute's reply pointed to his biometric attendance record and his alleged absence from duty. He maintained he had been prevented from discharging his duties and that the absence was not voluntary.
Two forums find the removal bad
He challenged the relieving order before the Education Appellate Tribunal at Hassan under Section 94 of the Karnataka Education Act, 1983. His case was that the qualification prescribed when he was appointed was a first-class bachelor's degree in the appropriate branch, that his appointment was therefore valid, and that he had discharged his duties satisfactorily.
The Tribunal set the removal aside in March 2021. A Single Judge affirmed that order in April 2026. Both proceeded, in substance, on the footing that the institute could not remove him without the enquiry that the Act requires. This intra-court appeal under Section 4 of the Karnataka High Court Act followed.
Eligibility is not misconduct
The Division Bench's reasoning turns on a distinction it treats as decisive.
A disciplinary proceeding, it held, is directed against an employee for an act or omission constituting misconduct. The absence of an essential qualification is a different thing altogether: it concerns the eligibility of the person to hold the post. Where the qualification prescribed by the governing statutory framework is absent, the question is not whether the employee should be punished for not possessing it, but whether he can continue to occupy the post notwithstanding the absence of the prescribed eligibility.
On the facts there was nothing to try. It was not in dispute that he was appointed on the strength of a B.E., that he does not hold an M.E. or M.Tech, that the subsequent regulatory requirement prescribes the postgraduate qualification for teaching undergraduate engineering courses, that he was informed of the requirement and given an opportunity to acquire it, and that he admittedly did not pursue it. This was therefore not a case of an otherwise qualified teacher being visited with a penalty for alleged misconduct.
The supporting authority was State of M.P. v. Shyama Pardhi, where appointees lacked the qualification prescribed for the post and it was held that an appointment made contrary to the prescribed qualification could not be sustained merely because the appointees had not been heard before their services were terminated.
The Bench also set out why the prescription itself was beyond challenge, relying on The Secretary, All India Shri Shivaji Memorial Society v. State of Maharashtra. The Council is an expert body mandated by law to prescribe essential qualifications for teaching posts, and a court cannot question the logic and wisdom of such a body; the law here prescribes not only the qualifications but the consequences of not having them, and there is nothing arbitrary in that. Fixing qualifications for appointment and promotion is the responsibility of expert bodies, and so long as what they prescribe is not shown to be arbitrary or perverse, courts will not interfere.
The judgment goes further and sets out the constitutional position on why a Central prescription of this kind prevails, summarising the law on Entry 66 of the Union List and Entry 25 of the Concurrent List: that “coordination” in Entry 66 means not mere evaluation but harmonisation to forge a uniform pattern, including the power to prevent disparities in standards from arising; that State legislation encroaching on that field, or repugnant to Central legislation under Entry 25, is void and inoperative unless saved under Article 254(2); and that a State authority may prescribe higher standards to shortlist where applicants exceed available places, but cannot deny on lower ones.
Where the Tribunal went wrong, and where the institute did
The Bench held that the Tribunal erred in treating the absence of a disciplinary enquiry as sufficient to invalidate the institute's action, having failed to appreciate the distinction between termination by way of disciplinary punishment and cessation of the entitlement to hold a post for want of the prescribed qualification. The requirement of an enquiry under Section 92(1) cannot be invoked to compel an institution to continue an employee who does not satisfy the statutory eligibility for the post. Neither length of service nor the absence of disciplinary proceedings confers a vested right to continue in disregard of a mandatory statutory requirement.
Then the judgment turns on the appellant. Despite being aware that the respondent did not possess the qualification required under the 2010 Regulations for the post of Assistant Professor, the institute appointed him — “for the reasons best known to them” — and it was only when the university conducted its inspection that he and other unqualified faculty were asked to acquire the postgraduate degree within three years.
The Bench held that the institute cannot escape liability completely, having made the respondent believe he was qualified to be appointed, and having kept him in the post for four years while he was not. In equity, it directed the institute to pay him Rs 12 lakh within four weeks.
Order
With that direction the intra-court appeal was allowed, and the Single Judge's judgment of April 2026 affirming the Tribunal's order was set aside. Pending applications did not survive.
For managements the holding is a useful one: a teacher who lacks a statutorily prescribed qualification and does not acquire it when given the chance cannot insist on a disciplinary enquiry as the price of being let go, because there is no charge to answer. The Karnataka Education Act's enquiry provisions regulate punishment, not eligibility, and an appellate tribunal that conflates the two is correcting the wrong thing.
The equity direction is what keeps the judgment from being a one-sided result, and it is pointed. The regulations that disqualified him were notified in March 2010; he was appointed in February 2011. On the Bench's own finding the institute knew. The money is not compensation for a wrongful termination — the termination was upheld — but for the four years of employment the college offered a man it knew could not lawfully hold the post, and for letting him believe otherwise until a university inspection forced the issue.
One strand of his case is not taken up in the operative reasoning. He had alleged that from August 2014 — nine months before the relieving order, and six months before the notices about qualifications — his name was struck off the attendance register and he was given no teaching work, so that the absence the institute later relied on was not of his making. The judgment records the allegation and the institute's biometric-attendance answer to it, but decides the appeal on eligibility, where that dispute makes no difference: a lecturer without the prescribed master's degree could not continue whether or not he was kept out of the classroom in the interim. The Rs 12 lakh sits where that grievance would otherwise have been argued, and the Bench framed it as the institute's share of the blame rather than as damages for being shut out.