This judgment decides only whether this petitioner, on his own service record, is entitled to pensionary benefits. It does not decide the validity of Rule 6 of the Pension Scheme generally, and it issues no direction about teachers other than the petitioner. The operative order states no deadline for sanctioning the pension.
- Case
- Mohammed Ali Ishak Patel v. Dr. Ambedkar College of Commerce and Economics & Ors.
- Court
- High Court of Bombay
- Decision
- Citation
- 2026:BHC-OS:24303-DB
- Bench
- M. S. Karnik; Sandesh D. Patil
- Judgment by
- Sandesh D. Patil
- Case numbers
- W.P. 915/2008
- Outcome
- Writ Petition No. 915 of 2008 allowed. The letters dated 27 October 2006 and 7 December 2007 are quashed, and the respondent authorities are directed to sanction the petitioner's pension application and compute pension and gratuity with 19 July 1973 as the start of his continuous employment. Rule made absolute; no order as to costs.
The decision
A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, comprising Justices M. S. Karnik and Sandesh D. Patil, has directed the authorities to sanction the pension of a teacher who served for 32 years and six months but was denied pensionary benefits because he never acquired a B.Ed. or D.Ed. qualification. The judgment, delivered on 5 November 2026, allows Writ Petition No. 915 of 2008.
The Court quashed two refusal letters, dated 27 October 2006 and 7 December 2007, and directed the respondent authorities to sanction the petitioner's pension application and compute his pension and gratuity with 19 July 1973, the date he began continuous employment, as the starting date. The Rule was made absolute, with no order as to costs.
The service record
The petitioner, Mohammed Ali Ishak Patel of Aurangabad, graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree on 17 July 1973 and began working as an Assistant Teacher at Moinul-Uloom High School, Aurangabad, on 19 July 1973. He served at that school until July 1977, with a break in 1974, obtained a Master of Commerce degree in 1977, and then taught at Burhani College of Arts and Commerce, Mazgaon, and at Anjuman-I-Islam's Akbar Peerbhoy College, both aided junior colleges.
On 1 July 1980 he joined Dr. Ambedkar College of Commerce and Economics as a permanent junior lecturer. The college was an aided junior college. He was upgraded to the senior scale on 3 July 1999 with effect from 1 July 1992, and retired on 31 January 2005 on reaching superannuation, as an Assistant Teacher in Commerce, after 32 years and six months in service.
He submitted his pension records to the Education Inspector on 22 August 2006. By a letter dated 27 October 2006, the Inspector informed the college that the application could not be granted. The petitioner approached the Pension Adalat, relying on the pension approval granted to his colleague Munnalal Premraj Pandit, who was similarly untrained on retirement. The Pension Adalat wrote to the Inspector seeking clarification about the uneven treatment, and on 7 December 2007 informed the petitioner that he was not entitled to pensionary benefits under Rule 6 of the Pension Scheme framed under a Government Circular dated 4 November 1968.
The issue
The question was whether a teacher who had served for more than three decades as a confirmed, recognised teacher, whose salary was paid throughout by the State of Maharashtra, could be denied pension solely because he never completed a B.Ed. or D.Ed. course, the training qualification for teaching in school.
The State contended that the petitioner had not completed a post-training course recognised by the Department, and was therefore never treated as a trained teacher for pension purposes. It relied on the Government Resolution of 4 November 1968, under which teachers who have completed more than two years of post-training service are treated as holding a permanent post substantively for the purposes of the pension scheme. On that footing, it said, the petitioner was not eligible for pensionary benefits and the petition should be dismissed.
The Court's earlier decisions
The Court proceeded on its own earlier decisions. In K. V. Krishnan v. State of Maharashtra (Writ Petition No. 1556 of 2000, decided 25 August 2000), a Division Bench had held that where a petitioner had rendered substantial service, had been treated as a confirmed full-time teacher against a sanctioned post, and his services had been approved from time to time by the Deputy Director of Education, it did not lie in the mouth of the respondents, after his retirement, to contend that he had been an untrained teacher throughout and was therefore not entitled to pension and gratuity.
In Asaram Yesuji Ghogare v. State of Maharashtra (Writ Petition No. 10467 of 2021, Aurangabad Bench), the Court had considered the decisions in Smt. Umabai Deshmukh (Writ Petition No. 6143 of 2016) and Smt. Gokula Vilas Patil (Writ Petition No. 5110 of 2012). It recorded the State's own communication of 9 February 2022, by which the Deputy Secretary, School Education and Sports Department, informed the Director of Primary Education that untrained teachers employed before 1 July 1992 were to be considered deemed trained teachers, and that employees appointed after 1 July 1972 as untrained teachers who had superannuated after lengthy service should be treated as special cases and granted pensionary benefits.
The Ghogare Bench had also observed that unnecessary litigation should be avoided, and had directed that its order and the Gokula Vilas Patil judgment be circulated to all Zilla Parishads in the State so that similar cases could be located and remedial steps taken, with a specific circular stating that the law applied to similarly placed employees.
The reasoning
The Court said it was not impressed by the arguments of the learned Assistant Government Pleader, observing that they ran contrary to the judgment in Asaram Yesuji Ghogare. Applying Krishnan, Umabai Deshmukh, Gokula Vilas Patil and Ghogare, the Bench held that the petitioner, who had put in 32 years and six months in service, was entitled to pensionary benefits.
The reasoning turns on the character of the service actually rendered: a teacher confirmed in a sanctioned post, recognised as a full-time teacher, and paid by the State for his entire career cannot be treated, only after retirement, as if he had never been a teacher at all. The want of a training qualification was not, on these facts, a sufficient ground to refuse pension and gratuity, particularly where the State itself had decided that similarly placed untrained teachers should be treated as deemed trained or as special cases.
The outcome
The petition was allowed. The Court quashed the letters dated 27 October 2006 and 7 December 2007, and directed the respondent authorities to sanction the petitioner's pension application and compute the pension and gratuity amount with 19 July 1973 as the starting date of his continuous employment. The Rule was made absolute, the petition stood disposed of, and there was no order as to costs.
The operative order states no deadline for sanctioning the pension. The three-month period mentioned in the judgment appears only inside the passage quoted from K. V. Krishnan, where the earlier Bench had directed sanction and release within three months of receipt of the writ in that case; it is not a direction in this order.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students
This is a study in how courts treat pension claims: pension is not a bounty but a right earned by long service, and a technical objection raised only after retirement carries little weight against a record of confirmed, State-approved service. Note how the Court used the State's own 9 February 2022 communication against it — an executive decision recognising deemed-trained status for the same class of teachers.
Note also the Court's concern, recorded in Ghogare, about avoidable litigation: where the law for a class of employees is settled, the Department is expected to apply it by circular rather than force each employee to file a writ petition. When you read service-law judgments, watch for this pattern — the ratio is often accompanied by a direction aimed at the administration, not just at the parties.
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- Why did the Court hold that the State could not, after the petitioner's retirement, deny pension on the ground that he had been an untrained teacher throughout his service?
- What did the State's own communication of 9 February 2022 say about untrained teachers employed before 1 July 1992, and how did the Court use it?
- What two directions did the Court issue in its operative order, and what start date did it fix for computing the pension and gratuity?
