In a boon to teaching staff working in unaided educational institutions, the High Court of Karnataka on Thursday upheld the constitutional validity of the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Act, 2009 and a notification, which had made teaching staff in all the unaided educational institutions eligible for payment of gratuity with retrospective effect from 1997.
Justice Ashok B. Hinchigeri passed the order while dismissing petitions filed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Medical College and others.
The Union government had amended the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 pertaining to teachers working in unaided education institutions with retrospective effect from April 3, 1997 and included “teachers” under the “employees” category in the Act.
The petitioners had claimed that giving retrospective effect to the amendment would adversely affect the financial positions of the unaided institutions as they had to spend crores of rupees to pay gratuity as even the retired teaching staff would be eligible for it.
While questioning constitutional validity of the amended Act, the institutions had also questioned implementation of the Act from retrospective date.
English medium
The High Court on Thursday cautioned officials of the Education Department that it would make them sit in the court hall to process the applications for grant of English-medium status to schools if they failed to adhere to the directions given by the court on the matter.
A Division Bench comprising Justice N. Kumar and Justice B. Sreenivase Gowda made these observations after the department failed to submit a report on how many applications for grant of English-medium status had been processed so far.
