Private school teachers entitled to gratuity, says Supreme Court- Education News

The Supreme Court has ruled that private schools will now have to pay gratuity to teachers who retired after 1997. Upholding a 2009 law entitling the private school teachers for gratuity, retrospectively from 1997, the SC invalidated a stay on its operation.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi in their ruling said “Payment of gratuity can’t be categorised as a windfall or a bounty payable by private schools as it is one of the minimal conditions of service.”, adding that, in this background, the argument of private schools that don’t have the capacity and ability to pay gratuity to the teachers is unapt and parsimonious. All establishments are bound to follow law, including the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Act, 2009.

The bench even rejected more than 20 petitions filed by the Independent Schools’ Federation of India along with those by other private schools and ordered them to “make payment to the employees/teachers along with the interest in accordance with the provisions of the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Act within six weeks”.

Private schools, in their argument, said that the 2009 legislation was in violation of an apex court judgment that had upheld the view that private school teachers were not employees and so not entitled for gratuity. They also added that not all of them are financially viable to pay gratuity. To this, the bench responded saying that the Supreme Court even while disallowing the claim of teachers to gratuity had itself pointed out lacunae in the earlier gratuity law but had said it was for the legislature to correct it.

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