A lecturer out of work since 1999 cannot be absorbed into an aided post, so the Court used Article 142 and gave him Rs 10 lakh

Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu set aside the direction to absorb him, held the State partly to blame for its own silence, and moulded the relief in money.

A commerce lecturer was terminated in August 1999, and in the same period the university permitted the college to close the commerce faculty for want of students. Sixteen years later the Bombay High Court at Nagpur quashed his termination and directed the Joint Director of Higher Education to put his name on the list of surplus teachers and absorb him in another college. The State appealed. On 13 October 2026 the Supreme Court held that the absorption machinery does not apply to a college running on a no grant-in-aid basis, but declined to send the man away with nothing, and awarded him Rs 10 lakh under Article 142.

Twenty-six years of the same dispute

The respondent was appointed a lecturer in the commerce faculty of a college in the academic session 1990-91. The college had been granted permission to operate strictly on a no grant-in-aid basis. After a series of earlier terminations and reinstatements he was suspended, the management of the society held a departmental enquiry, and on completion of the enquiry, and after obtaining the university's permission, he was terminated from service on 17 August 1999. Around the same time the university permitted the management to close the commerce faculty from the academic session 1999-2000 for want of students.

His appeal to the University and College Tribunal at Nagpur was dismissed on 24 April 2000. He then filed a writ petition, and by the judgment under appeal the High Court set aside the Tribunal's order, quashed the termination, and gave the direction about absorption. The State's appeals against that direction were admitted in March 2016, and the direction about absorption was stayed when leave was granted.

Two readings of who must be absorbed

The State's case rested on where the money comes from. Relying on a Government Resolution of 24 March 1994 and a corrigendum of 21 March 1997, it argued that the policy for absorbing surplus lecturers applies exclusively to grant-in-aid colleges, and that the High Court had exceeded its jurisdiction in directing the absorption of a teacher from a college that received no aid.

For the respondent it was argued that Section 79(4) of the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994 requires the absorption of surplus lecturers in all affiliated colleges, without distinguishing between aided and unaided institutions, which would render the 1997 corrigendum non est in law. He also claimed parity with another similarly situated lecturer, since deceased, who had been absorbed.

The party who was never made a party

The Court found the fulcrum of the dispute elsewhere, in a procedural infirmity going to the root of the matter: the State of Maharashtra was never impleaded in the writ proceedings. It is admitted that the State was not arrayed as a respondent in the writ petition. Only in March 2015, nearly fifteen years after the petition was instituted, did the respondent apply to implead the Joint Director as the sixth respondent — and not the State by name. The High Court then issued a writ of mandamus directing his inclusion in the surplus list for absorption, a direction that fastens a direct and continuous financial and administrative liability on the State.

It was argued for the respondent that the petition was competent because the State was represented through the office of the Joint Director, with the Assistant Government Pleader contesting the matter on merits. The Court held that this overlooks a settled position: the State, being a necessary party, had to be impleaded, and mere representation through one of its officers cannot dispense with that. In Ranjeet Mal v. General Manager, Northern Railway a three-judge Bench held that an employee of the Union cannot enforce an order setting aside his removal by impleading only the General Manager, because any order would have to be enforced against the Union and not merely its servants. Jagtu v. Suraj Mal applied the same reasoning to a declaration of rights over land belonging to the State: without the State the proceedings cannot continue. The Court also referred to its disapproval of the practice in Chaman Lal v. State of Punjab.

The point of law, and the point against the State

On the substantive question the Court accepted the State's position: the mandate for absorbing surplus teachers does not apply to a college operating on a no grant-in-aid basis. The direction to the Joint Director to place the respondent's name on the surplus list and absorb him in another college therefore could not stand.

The Court did not leave the matter there. It observed that the State, too, shares a degree of blame, for not raising its specific objection about non-impleadment firmly at the earliest opportunity before the High Court. The consequence of that silence was that a direction which should never have been made against it went unchallenged for years, while the man it concerned stayed out of employment from 1999.

Moulding the relief

At the Court's request, recorded in an order of 12 August 2026, the State placed on record a calculation chart setting out the arrears of salary the respondent would have been entitled to had he continued as a college lecturer between 7 October 2015 and 30 November 2025. The Court described the net figure as staggering, and treated it as the measure of what a mechanical application of the High Court's direction would have produced.

What it did instead was to invoke its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 142 of the Constitution to do complete justice between the parties. Leaving the respondent destitute at this stage of his life, the Court said, would be a travesty of justice; he was not to be left without any succour at the twilight of his life.

Order

The Court set aside the direction in the High Court's judgment requiring the respondent's name to be included in the list of surplus lecturers and his absorption in another college, and directed the appellant State to pay him a consolidated sum of Rs 10,00,000 within eight weeks, in full and final settlement of all his claims. The compensation already paid by the management was left undisturbed. The Court recorded that the direction is passed in the unique facts and circumstances of the case and shall not be treated as a precedent. The appeals were allowed on those terms, interim orders vacated, and no order as to costs was made.