Eligibility is tested at the date of appointment, not the date the certificate was issued
Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu set aside a Patna High Court reinstatement order, holding a Bihar block teacher was never eligible under the 2006 Rules when appointed.
A Bihar teacher who held a January 1995 teacher training certificate, issued six months before the National Council for Teacher Education Act came into force, cannot rely on that timing to defend an appointment made in 2007 under rules that require recognition by the Council. The Supreme Court has set aside a Patna High Court order directing his reinstatement, holding that eligibility for appointment to public office is judged on the last date for submitting applications or at the latest by the date of appointment. A Division Bench of Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Sheel Nagu said it had been inclined to take a different course, because the record on whether his college was genuine was never properly built, but found the eligibility point unanswerable.
Thirty-one years from a certificate to a final answer
The chronology is set out in the judgment as a table, and it is the spine of the case. On 2 January 1995 Nandeshwar Kumar was issued a Senior Teacher Training Certificate by Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education, Calcutta. The NCTE Act took effect on 1 July 1995. On 11 September 2007, on the strength of that certificate, he was appointed a Trained Block Teacher under the Bihar Panchayat Elementary Teacher (Employment and Service Conditions) Rules, 2006.
Eight years later the file turned. On 31 October 2015 the District Programme Officer found his certificate to have been issued by an unrecognised institution. A show-cause notice went to him and three others on 26 November 2015. He replied two days later with three points: that his qualification was obtained well before the NCTE Act came into effect; that Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education was registered as a society under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961; and that another candidate, Vinod Kumar son of Jageshwar Das, who had obtained his certificate from the same college, was still serving as a Trained Block Teacher. His services were terminated on 2 December 2015. He was one of four Trained Block Teachers who received that show-cause notice on the same ground; the judgment records nothing about what became of the other three, and the point he had made about a colleague from the same college continuing in service was never answered on the record either.
His first writ petition, CWJ Case No. 19322 of 2015, was disposed of on 11 January 2016 without any examination of merits, the High Court relegating him to the District Teacher Appellate Authority. That authority set aside the termination on 20 February 2016 and directed reinstatement with all consequential benefits. On 16 September 2022 the State Appellate Authority reversed it. A Single Bench of the Patna High Court dismissed his writ petition, CWJC No. 14676 of 2022, on 10 November 2022. On 8 July 2025 a Division Bench allowed his Letters Patent Appeal, LPA No. 669 of 2022, reversed the Single Bench and directed reinstatement with all consequential benefits, monetary ones included, within four months. The State of Bihar then came to the Supreme Court.
Counted up, five forums looked at the same termination and the answer changed four times. The District Teacher Appellate Authority set it aside. The State Appellate Authority restored it. The Single Bench of the High Court upheld the termination. The Division Bench struck it down and ordered reinstatement with back wages. The Supreme Court has now restored the termination. Nandeshwar Kumar had been out of service for close to eleven years by the time the last of those orders was passed.
How two High Courts came to assess certificates on their own
The State Appellate Authority had rested its reversal on two earlier High Court findings. The first was an order of 14 September 2012 in LPA No. 244 of 2011, holding Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education to be recognised neither by the NCTE nor by the Government of Bihar. The second was a Division Bench decision of the Jharkhand High Court of 30 March 2005 in LPA No. 235 of 2004, which had occasion to assess the legality of certificates issued by nine institutes, this college among them.
What happened in that 2005 case is where the Supreme Court's unease begins. Receiving no assistance from either side, the Division Bench undertook what the present judgment calls a self-assessing exercise, and recorded a set of observations: the certificate formats of all nine institutes were the same; the signatures of the Principal of all the institutes were the same; the examiner's signature was common to four or five of them; some of the addresses were common; and Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education was “found to exist on paper”. On that footing it declined relief to the candidates before it.
The Bench observed that on two occasions, in LPA No. 235 of 2004 and again in the order now under appeal, a High Court had indulged in self-assessment because the parties gave it nothing to work with. In the absence of any assistance at both stages, it held, the High Court did not have cogent material on which to reach a conclusive finding whether the certificates issued by Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education were fake or not.
That gap had been noticed before. In Seema Kumari and Ors. vs State of Jharkhand and Ors., (2006) 12 SCC 215, the Supreme Court had set aside the observations and findings of the Jharkhand High Court in LPA No. 235 of 2004, expressing doubt as to the genuineness of the institutions including this college. The findings the Bihar authorities were relying on in 2022 had therefore already been displaced in 2006.
The Division Bench of the Patna High Court had seized on exactly this. Its order recorded that there was no material information from the competent authority of the State of West Bengal on whether Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education was recognised; that the State of Bihar had never ascertained from West Bengal whether the institution was genuine or obtained any correspondence to support the claim that the certificate was invalid; and that the Single Judge had not addressed these issues at all. It also held that the NCTE Act, in force from 1 July 1995, had no application to a certificate in hand before that date.
Its conclusion was that the matter stood squarely covered in the teacher's favour on a reading of two paragraphs of an earlier decision, that the Single Judge had not been apprised of it, and that the Single Judge had equally failed to notice that the teacher held his senior teacher training certificate before the Act commenced. On that reasoning both the Single Bench order and the State Appellate Authority's order of 16 September 2022 were set aside.
What Rule 8(a) required
The Supreme Court said in terms that it had been inclined to take a different course, “but there is an aspect which glares in the face” and was palpable enough to dissuade it. That aspect was eligibility.
Rule 8(a) of the 2006 Rules, reproduced in the judgment in full, sets out what a Block Teacher must have: Indian citizenship and residence in Bihar; a pass in Higher Secondary or Intermediate or an equivalent examination from a government recognised educational institution; and a two-year teacher training diploma or certificate from a training institute recognised by the National Council for Teacher Education, or a degree in elementary education, or a B.Ed. or equivalent qualification. A separate line provides for physical education teachers. A proviso allows, in the first employment, candidates who passed matriculation or an equivalent examination from a government recognised school and obtained two years of teacher training, a B.Ed. or a two-year physical training certificate from a recognised training school or recognised college before the NCTE Act came into force.
On the main clause the Bench found the position undisputed. Nandeshwar Kumar held a certificate on 11 September 2007, but not one recognised by the NCTE; it was not disputed that the 2006 Rules were the rules under which he was appointed, nor that the certificate from Dr. B. C. Roy College of Education carried no NCTE recognition, for the plain reason that the Act had not come into being when the certificate was issued in January 1995. The coming into force of the Act on 1 July 1995 was what impelled Bihar to frame the 2006 Rules stipulating recognition by the Council. On the date of his appointment, therefore, he did not meet the requirement.
The error the Division Bench made
The High Court's reasoning, the Bench held, was misplaced. The Division Bench had treated the NCTE Act as irrelevant because its norms operate prospectively from 1 July 1995 and the certificate predated that. But the eligibility of a candidate for appointment to public office is seen on the last date for submission of application forms, or at the latest by the date of appointment, and the appointment here was expressly offered under the 2006 Rules. Whatever the date on the certificate, the yardstick was the one in force in 2007.
The Court recorded that the respondent's candidature could not have been considered eligible under the 2006 Rules at the time of his appointment, and held that the Division Bench order in LPA No. 669 of 2022 deserved to be set aside.
Order
Civil Appeal No. 13079 of 2026, filed by the State of Bihar, was allowed. The order of the Patna High Court Division Bench of 8 July 2025 was set aside and LPA No. 669 of 2022 stands dismissed. The direction to reinstate Nandeshwar Kumar with all consequential benefits within four months falls with it.