Supreme Court Rejects Claims of 361 West Bengal Madrasa Staff for State Salary, Regularisation
The Supreme Court has dismissed a batch of petitions filed by 361 teaching and non-teaching employees of recognised madrasas in West Bengal, refusing to grant them regular appointments or salaries under the State’s grant-in-aid scheme. The ruling brings to an end a prolonged legal battle over appointments made outside the statutory recruitment process established under the West Bengal Madrasah Service Commission Act, 2008.
A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih held that none of the petitioners had established a legal entitlement to regularisation or financial benefits. The Court had examined 13 representative test cases, observing that if even one petitioner had succeeded, the remaining cases could have been considered on similar grounds. However, finding no merit in any of the test cases, the Bench dismissed all the connected petitions.
The dispute traces its origins to litigation surrounding appointments in recognised madrasas after the enactment of the West Bengal Madrasah Service Commission Act, 2008, which created a statutory mechanism for recruitment. Earlier challenges to the Act and subsequent disputes over appointments led to multiple rounds of litigation. In 2023, while dealing with contempt petitions alleging non-payment of salaries, the Supreme Court constituted a committee headed by retired Calcutta High Court judge Justice Debi Prasad Dey to verify the individual claims of the employees.
The committee scrutinised the records and concluded that none of the claimants could substantiate a valid appointment entitling them to grant-in-aid salaries. Relying on these findings, the Supreme Court held that the petitioners had failed to establish any enforceable legal right to either regularisation or payment from the State exchequer. The Court observed that public employment and grant-in-aid benefits cannot be extended in the absence of appointments made in accordance with the statutory recruitment framework.
The judgment reinforces the principle that appointments to aided educational institutions must strictly comply with the recruitment procedure prescribed by law. The Bench declined to invoke its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution to grant relief where the foundational requirement of a valid appointment itself remained unproved.
The verdict is expected to have wider implications for disputes involving irregular appointments in government-aided institutions, reaffirming that claims for regularisation or State-funded salaries cannot succeed unless supported by a lawful recruitment process. It also underscores the judiciary’s consistent view that equitable considerations cannot override statutory requirements governing public employment and the disbursement of public funds.
