TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (6) TMI 580
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....2025, Diary No.60486/2025, Diary No.60488/2025, Diary No.60491/2025, Diary No.60493/2025, Diary No.60497/2025, Diary No.60501/2025, Diary No.60528/2025, Diary No.60529/2025, Diary No.60533/2025, Diary No.60534/2025, Diary No.60539/2025, Diary No.65262/2025, Diary No.9261/2026, Diary No.12697/2026, Diary No.12820/2026, Diary No.14435/2026, Diary No.15376/2026, Diary No.17253/2026, Diary No.20018/2026, Diary No.23484/2026, Diary No.25604/2026, Diary No.25730/2026, Diary No.26320/2026, Diary No.56443/2025, Diary No.24377/2026, Diary No.27488/2026, AND Diary No.28296/2026. DIPANKAR DATTA AND MANMOHAN JJ. For the Petitioner : Mr. Vikrant Singh Bais, AOR Mr. P.D. Patwalia, Sr. Adv. Mr. R.K. Singh, Adv. Mrs. Neeraj Singh, Adv. Mr. Tom Joseph, AOR Mr. Kumar Gaurav, Adv. Ms. Kristen Sleeth, Adv. Mr. Prashant Bhardwaj, Adv. Mr. Abhijit Sengupta, AOR Mr. Vikram Hegde, AOR Mr. Ankit Goel, AOR Mr. Salman Khurshid, Sr. Adv. Ms. Lubna Naaz, AOR Mr. P. Yobin, Adv. Mr. Snehasish Mukherjee, Adv. Mr. Soumya Dutta, AOR Mr. Debranjan Das, Adv. Mr. Gouranga Debnath, Adv. Mr. Siddhant Upmanyu, Adv. Ms. Nisstha Balodia, Adv. Ms. S. Lakshmi Iyer, AOR Mr. Abhishek Chaterjee, Adv. Mr. Ankit Ambasta, AO....
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....Mr. H. Chandra Sekhar, AOR Mr. Tushar Sharma, Adv. Mr. Tarun Verma, Adv. Ms. Khushboo Singh, Adv. Ms. Ruchi Gupta, AOR Mr. Ashutosh Kumar Sharma, AOR Ms. Anubha Dhulia, Adv. For the Respondent : Mr. Shrey Ravi Dambhare, AOR JUDGMENT DIPANKAR DATTA, J. PROEM 1. We are tasked to consider and decide a batch of review petitions (initially in excess of 65 and some subsequently), that are presented with a common grievance that the judgment and order [order under review] passed by us in Anjuman Ishaate-Taleem Trust v. State of Maharashtra [2025 SCC OnLine SC 1912] erroneously interprets the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 [RTE Act]. Premised on the multi-fold grounds urged in the petitions, it is claimed that the order under review has caused immense injustice to the petitioners and, thus, ought to be reviewed upon extending opportunity of hearing in open court proceedings. Vide the order under review, inter alia, in-service teachers imparting lessons to students recruited prior to enactment of the RTE Act, and having more than 5 (five) years to retire on superannuation, were held to be under an obligation to qualify the Teacher Eligibility Test....
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....essary to do so. 16.3. An error which is not self-evident and has to be detected by a process of reasoning, can hardly be said to be an error apparent on the face of record justifying the court to exercise its power of review. 16.4. In exercise of the jurisdiction under Order 47 Rule 1CPC, it is not permissible for an erroneous decision to be "reheard and corrected". 16.5. A review petition has a limited purpose and cannot be allowed to be "an appeal in disguise". 16.6. Under the guise of review, the petitioner cannot be permitted to reagitate and reargue the questions which have already been addressed and decided. 16.7. An error on the face of record must be such an error which, mere looking at the record should strike and it should not require any long-drawn process of reasoning on the points where there may conceivably be two opinions. 16.8. Even the change in law or subsequent decision/judgment of a coordinate or larger Bench by itself cannot be regarded as a ground for review. 7. The above-referred decisions are only two out of multiple precedents which emphatically lay down the law that a review petition cannot, by any ....
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....tion of the RTE Act in general and Section 23 thereof in particular, and that too midway in the career of the teachers, is claimed to violate a fundamental principle of service jurisprudence, viz. change in conditions of service after appointment causing serious prejudice to the employee cannot be effected. d. Paragraph 4 (c) of the notification dated 23rd August, 2010 issued by the National Council for Teacher Education [NCTE] exempted teachers appointed for Classes I to VIII prior to the date of the notification from the requirement of possessing the minimum qualifications stipulated in paragraph 1 thereof, including qualification of the TET. e. Finally, and without prejudice to the other contentions, some of the petitioners contended that the time granted by this Court in paragraph 217 of Anjuman (supra), i.e., 2 (two) years to acquire the TET, is too short. Thus, they seek a suitable extension of time to acquire the qualification. ANALYSIS AND DECISION 11. We have heard the petitioners at length on their objections to the order under review. Any grievance that they were not heard stands dispelled. We now propose to explain why their objections do not hol....
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....teacher, for such period, not exceeding five years, as may be specified in that notification: Provided that a teacher who, at the commencement of this Act, does not possess minimum qualifications as laid down under sub-section (1), shall acquire such minimum qualifications within a period of five years: Provided further that every teacher appointed or in position as on the 31st March, 2015, who does not possess minimum qualifications as laid down under sub-section (1), shall acquire such minimum qualifications within a period of four years from the date of commencement of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Act, 2017 (24 of 2017). (3) The salary and allowances payable to, and the terms and conditions of service of, teachers shall be such as may be prescribed. (emphasis ours) 16. Significantly, sub-section (1) starts with the word "Any person", while the two provisos to sub-section (2) refer either to "a teacher" or "every teacher". Upon plain reading, the different words used by the legislature, in our understanding, are not without good reason. 17. For the present, we may profitably leave aside the second proviso i....
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....n this prism, the submission grounded on alleged retrospective application of the RTE Act regime by judicial interpretation does not merit acceptance. The statutory framework in itself is plain: it neither invalidates past appointments retrospectively nor visits existing teachers with immediate disqualification. On the contrary, both the original enactment and its amendment are premised upon legislative recognition of existing appointments while simultaneously stipulating a time-bound mechanism for securing minimum qualifications in the larger interest of maintaining standards in elementary education. B. NCTE ACT VIS-À-VIS RTE ACT 21. Apropos the submission made qua section 12A of the NCTE Act, it may be relevant to reproduce the provision coupled with the following provisos as follows: 12A. Power of Council to determine minimum standards of education of school teachers.-For the purpose of maintaining standards of education in schools, the Council may, by regulations, determine the qualifications of persons for being recruited as teachers in any pre-primary, primary, upper primary, secondary, senior secondary or intermediate school or college, by whatever name....
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.... seen as an evil [see paragraph 215 of the judgment in Anjuman (supra)] are observations made by us in Anjuman (supra) which need reiteration. 25. In view of the reasoning hereinabove qua the retrospectivity of the legislation and the amendment, and since the provision and the proviso extend the compliance window for teachers to equip themselves to improve the quality of teaching for children of impressionable age, in our considered opinion, the provisions of Section 23 cannot be seen as resulting in imposition of a new condition of service. D. PUBLIC INTEREST RAMIFICATIONS OF DISPLACEMENT OF TEACHERS 26. It was further contended on behalf of the various States that making TET qualification mandatory for in-service teachers, aligned with the stipulated two-year period of compliance, could potentially lead to a large number of teachers being rendered ineligible to continue in service. According to the States, such a consequence would not merely imperil the employment of concerned teachers but would also have serious ramifications on the edifice of public education, particularly the interests of school-going children who may suffer disruption in the continuity and quality of....