Orissa HC: teacher who agreed to drop grant-in-aid in 1995 cannot claim State pay or age 60

Justice Sanjeeb K Panigrahi and Justice Chittaranjan Dash upheld the dismissal of a writ by a teacher at the Hindustan Aeronautics school in Sunabeda, holding that his express consent in 1995 to leave the aided regime ended any claim to Government pay scales, matching dearness allowance and retirement at 60.

In 1995, 22 of 25 aided teachers at a school in Sunabeda, Koraput, agreed to give up Government grant-in-aid and follow the rules of the society running it. One of them, Saroj Chandra Behera, was retired at 58 in January 2014 and went to court for Government pay scales and two more years of service.

On 9 November 2026 the Orissa High Court dismissed his intra-court appeal. A Division Bench said his claims all rested on a status the school had lost with his own consent, nearly two decades before he challenged it.

A school that left the aided fold

The Aeronautics DAV High School was set up in 1968 by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) at Sunabeda. In 1974 the Government of Odisha began paying full grant-in-aid towards staff salaries, which brought the school within Section 3(b) of the Odisha Education Act, 1969.

HAL had meanwhile created the Aeronautics Education Society, a registered body chaired by the General Manager of its Koraput Division, to run its schools. Mr Behera joined as a Trained Graduate Teacher on 2 September 1980, and the Inspector of Schools, Koraput, approved the appointment on 13 May 1982.

In 1993 the Society offered to carry the school’s entire financial and administrative burden. By a letter of 5 May 1995 the State allowed HAL to take over management on the express condition that no grant-in-aid would be claimed afterwards.

Three claims in a 2013 writ

Mr Behera, born on 5 January 1956, filed W.P.(C) No. 26434 of 2013 in the Orissa High Court. He sought the revised scales of pay from 1 January 1996 and 1 January 2006, with arrears, and dearness allowance at the rates paid to State Government, Central Government and HAL staff.

He also asked to serve until 60, the retirement age for aided school staff and HAL employees. The school had superannuated him at 58 with effect from 31 January 2014, which he said cut his tenure short by two years.

A Single Judge dismissed the petition on 14 September 2022. The grounds were delay, waiver, acquiescence and estoppel, and suppression of the meeting of 17 July 2012, where pay, dearness allowance, gratuity, leave and retirement age were discussed. On merits, the Single Judge held that an employee of an independent society could not claim parity with Government or HAL staff.

What each side argued in the appeal

Mr Sidheswar Mallik, for Mr Behera, said the Single Judge never decided the main issue, which was the legality of HAL passing the school to a private society despite the State’s no-objection letter. The consent document at Annexure-L/2, he said, showed staff opting to serve under HAL, not the Society.

He argued that State of Uttar Pradesh v. Principal, Abhay Nandan Inter College was distinguishable. The question, he said, was whether a school could revert to a private body after taking aid for nearly two decades.

He also relied on Section 9 of the Act, which restricts alienation of an aided institution’s property.

On delay, he said the cause of action arose when HAL withheld pay revision and the Society issued the notice of retirement at 58. He added that there can be no estoppel against fundamental rights.

Mr Ajodhya Ranjan Dash appeared for Respondent Nos. 1 to 3. He said the teachers themselves had asked for the Society to take over, that 22 of 25 had consented, and that Mr Behera had then worked under the Society for about 19 years without protest.

The Society’s staff, he said, got residential quarters, subsidised utilities, treatment at HAL Hospital, medical reimbursement and leave travel concession. A teacher could not take the Government dearness allowance and leave the rest. He also relied on Lindsay Petroleum Co. v. Hurd and Chairman, State Bank of India v. M.J. James on acquiescence.

The court’s limit on intra-court appeals

Dr Justice Sanjeeb K Panigrahi, writing for the Bench, started with the scope of a Letters Patent appeal. It is not a fresh hearing of the writ petition, he said. The Bench asks whether the Single Judge erred in law, misread the record or reached a conclusion no reasonable mind could reach.

He cited Management of Narendra and Company Pvt. Ltd. v. Workmen of Narendra and Company, where the Supreme Court held that an intra-court appeal does not lie merely because another view of the evidence is possible. Absent patent error or perversity, the Single Judge’s view stands.

Aided status ends when aid ends

The Bench rejected the idea that a school once aided can never return to private status. Section 3(b) makes receipt of aid the defining feature, it said, so when aid stops, the status stops. The appellant had shown no provision forcing an institution to keep taking aid.

The court read Abhay Nandan Inter College as holding that aid is not a matter of right and an unwilling institution may decline it. It saw “no principled distinction” between declining aid at the start and ceasing to take it later, and called the appellant’s point one of timing, not principle (paras 10-11).

Section 9 did not help either. It protects public investment in the school’s property, the Bench said, and gives no teacher a right to Government scales for life. No relief touching school property had been sought in the writ.

The paper trail behind the 1995 handover

The court then went through the correspondence. By letter of 3 April 1993 HAL told the Director of Secondary Education that the Society would fully finance the school from 1993-94.

On 6 May 1994 the Inspector asked HAL whether it would take over under the Society. On 22 August 1994 the General Manager said the Society was ready to do so.

The Society, the Bench noted, was named in every letter from the start. It was not introduced after the State agreed. The Inspector of Schools wrote on 22 June 1995 that aid would stop from 1 June 1995.

It also pointed to the appellant’s own pleading, which called the Society the vehicle through which HAL runs its Sunabeda schools. He could not say the Society was HAL for one purpose and a stranger for another, the court said (para 15).

Consent in 1995, challenge in 2013

The staff, including Mr Behera, sent a joint representation on 10 May 1993 asking for the Society to take over the school. On 27 June 1995, 22 of the 25 aided employees expressly consented to withdraw grant-in-aid and be governed by the Society’s rules. The other three were placed in other aided institutions.

The 22 also applied for final withdrawal of their General Provident Fund accumulations for February 1994 to May 1995. That conduct, the Bench said, sat badly with a later claim that he never agreed to leave the aided regime (para 16).

Even on the appellant’s reading of Annexure-L/2, the court said, an option to stay under HAL management is not absorption into HAL or a right to HAL’s scales. Neither the State’s letter nor any other document showed an undertaking by HAL to absorb the staff. The only condition was no grant-in-aid, and that was met.

Rule 9 falls with the aid

Rule 9 of the 1974 Rules assures aided school staff the pay scales of Government school counterparts. But the court held that protection is tied to the school’s aided character. Once aid ended in 1995 with the employees’ consent, the foundation of the parity claim went with it.

The Odisha Revised Scales of Pay Rules of 1998 and 2008 do not reach a registered society’s employees by their own force, the Bench said. HAL’s financing and management through the Society did not make Mr Behera an HAL employee. Financial patronage, it said, does not create an employer-employee relationship.

The advertisement at Annexure-6 was for posts in Aeronautics Girls High School and could not govern his service. At best it showed the Society used Government scales as a benchmark. That is different from taking on every later revision with retrospective effect.

Dearness allowance, the 2012 meeting, age 58

The Society had itself revised pay from August 2009 and extended Time Bound Advancement by its own circular. Any arrears claim, the court said, must be worked out under the Society’s order and cannot be turned into a right to Government scales.

At the meeting of 17 July 2012 the Society and the teachers’ representatives agreed to pay dearness allowance at 58 per cent from July 2012, one step below the State pattern. Arrears for August 2009 to June 2012 were to be worked out two steps below the State rate. Mr Behera took part and never challenged the decision.

The Bench read the service package as a whole, with quarters, subsidised water and electricity, HAL Hospital treatment, medical reimbursement, leave travel concession, leave encashment and a 12 per cent contributory provident fund. He could not pick the dearness allowance and leave the rest.

On retirement, the same meeting had kept the age at 58. The age of superannuation, the court said, is “a creature of the rules governing the service” (para 22). The State’s higher age for aided institutions binds those the rules cover and does not travel to a society’s staff without statute or contractual adoption.

On equality, the court said employees of the Society are a distinct class with their own employer, funds and conditions. Government servants, HAL staff and aided school staff are differently placed, so Article 14 gave no claim to parity.

Delay refined, acquiescence upheld

Here the Bench modified the Single Judge’s reasoning. Citing Union of India v. Tarsem Singh, it said a claim to pay recurs, so delay ordinarily limits arrears and does not defeat the claim. The challenge to retirement at 58 was also filed before he retired, so delay alone would not have sunk it.

But every claim, the court said, rested on one completed event, the change in the school’s status in 1995. He had consented, withdrawn his provident fund, served under the Society for about 19 years and first questioned the change in 2013. Recurring money claims could not revive a challenge to that foundation.

The court accepted the appellant’s point from Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation that there is no estoppel against fundamental rights. It held the point misplaced, because he had shown no fundamental or statutory right to Government scales or retirement at 60.

“One cannot accept the benefits of an arrangement and reject its obligations” (para 25)

It applied the rule against approbating and reprobating from R.N. Gosain v. Yashpal Dhir to a teacher who took the Society’s terms and then disowned them.

Facts left out of the writ petition

The writ petition did not mention the representation of 10 May 1993, the option of 27 June 1995, the provident fund withdrawal or the meeting of 17 July 2012. The last dealt with the very subjects of the writ: pay, dearness allowance, gratuity, leave and retirement age.

These facts bore directly on whether discretionary relief was available, the Bench said. A litigant invoking writ jurisdiction must put all material facts before the court, and the Single Judge was right to weigh the omission.

Order

The Division Bench held that the Single Judge’s conclusions rested on firm factual and legal foundations. Consent to the 1995 change, acquiescence for nearly 19 years, the 2012 decision retaining the age of 58 and the absence of an enforceable right each independently sustained the judgment, it said.

The writ appeal was dismissed with no order as to costs. Any interim order passed earlier stands vacated. Justice Chittaranjan Dash agreed with the judgment written by Justice Panigrahi.