The Supreme Court has declared that the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and its Executive Committee have ample statutory empowerment to call upon Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) to submit annual Performance Appraisal Reports (PARs), traceable directly to Section 12(k) of the NCTE Act, 1993. Even without specific statutory authorisation, the Court held that requiring PARs is an incidental and ancillary power of a statutory regulator, particularly since the NCTE itself is subject to performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
The Court identified seven duty bearers responsible for ensuring quality education under the RTE framework, with the NCTE being the seventh and highest duty bearer entrusted with planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system. Accountability was recognised as an essential principle of administrative law with three constituent dimensions, namely responsibility, answerability, and enforceability, and Constitutional courts have a positive duty to ensure regulators exercise their powers effectively and in an accountable manner. Accordingly, the Public Notice dated 22 September 2019 issued by the Member Secretary of the Executive Committee was declared legal.
A Two-Judge Bench comprising Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe observed that teacher education has assumed greater importance after elementary education for children aged 6 to 14 was recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21A of the Constitution, and that the RTE Act, 2009, under Section 23, recognises the importance of qualified teachers by designating an ‘academic authority’ to lay down minimum qualifications. The Court identified seven duty bearers responsible for ensuring quality education, with the NCTE being the seventh and perhaps the highest duty bearer, entrusted with achieving planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system.
The Court noted that the Executive Committee, constituted under Section 19 of the NCTE Act, is the body which actually discharges the functions of the Council and has the obligation to implement the purpose and object of the Act. From the Minutes of the 48th Meeting of the General Body held on 5 February 2019, the Court observed that the Council deliberated on the issue of PAR-linked renewal of recognition and approved the agenda item, authorising NCTE to proceed through a proforma to be developed by NCTE itself. The Court further observed that accountability is an essential principle of administrative law with three constituent dimensions, namely responsibility, answerability, and enforceability, and that Constitutional courts have a positive duty to ensure that regulators exercise their powers effectively, efficiently, and in an accountable manner.
Briefly, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) issued a Public Notice dated 22 September 2019 requiring all Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) to mandatorily submit an annual Performance Appraisal Report (PAR) online through a designated portal, accompanied by a fee of Rs 5,000 for Central and State Government institutions and Rs 15,000 for all other categories, failing which action under Section 17(1) of the NCTE Act, 1993 would follow.
The TEIs challenged this notice before the Delhi High Court, contending that only the Council could have issued such a notice and that the Executive Committee had not been empowered to do so. While the Single Judge dismissed the petition, the Division Bench allowed the appeals and quashed the notice, holding that the proforma attached to the notice was never placed before or approved by the NCTE, and that the function under Section 12(k) of the NCTE Act had not been validly delegated to the Member Secretary under Section 27.
