In a strong rebuke to administrative arbitrariness, the Supreme Court overturned the dismissal of two Jharkhand schoolteachers who were removed from service on grounds never cited in their show-cause notices.
The teachers — appointed in 2015 as Intermediate Trained Teachers — were suspended in 2016 for allegedly failing to meet the minimum eligibility marks. The show-cause notice claimed they hadn’t achieved the 45% threshold. In response, they pointed out that as Scheduled Tribe candidates, the qualifying benchmark was 40%, which they had comfortably met.
But instead of addressing that reply, the employer shifted the goalpost. Without warning, it introduced a new accusation — that their method of calculating marks was flawed because vocational subject marks couldn’t be counted. The teachers were dismissed on this fresh, unmentioned charge, and not even given a chance to explain.
A single judge of the High Court had earlier sided with the teachers, setting aside their termination, but a division bench reversed that decision — until the matter reached the Supreme Court.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and KV Viswanathan restored justice, calling the employer’s conduct “high-handed, arbitrary, and illegal.” The Court ruled that punishing employees for a reason outside the show-cause notice violates the core principle of natural justice.
“The case is akin to punishing a person for Charge B after he has successfully defended Charge A,” the judgment said. “Such a process offends due process and renders the entire action unsustainable.”
The Court ordered that the two teachers — Ravi and Prem Lal — be reinstated with full back wages and service continuity from December 2015. Their experience during the dismissal period, however, would not count toward promotion criteria since it involved no actual teaching work.
In essence, the ruling reaffirms a timeless legal truth: no one can be condemned for a wrong they were never accused of.
