Justice Pankaj Bhatia of the Allahabad High Court struck down the three‑year cap on arrears, ordering that assistant teachers who have been acting headmasters receive the full headmaster salary from the day they took charge.
The petitioners, numbering 1,030 and including Poonam Rani Varshney, had contended that no regular headmasters were appointed in their schools, yet they had been performing headmaster duties while being paid at the assistant‑teacher rate.
The bench cited a 2019 Supreme Court decision in Union of India vs Tarsem Singh that had imposed the three‑year restriction, but reversed that stance after the 2023 ruling in Maya Banerjee vs Union of India, which held the earlier cap to be untenable.
The court declared that the salary earned as an acting headmaster is a 'valuable right akin to property', making a time limit inappropriate, and confirmed that earlier directives in the Tripurari Dubey case remain in force except for the three‑year restriction.
The state will be required to issue payment orders and settle the arrears retroactively, while the Uttar Pradesh government has already issued orders aligning in‑charge headmasters’ salaries with those of full headmasters.
The next step will involve the finance department issuing payment orders and schools complying with the court’s directives within the coming weeks.