Supreme Court upholds NCTE's power to seek performance appraisal reports from teacher training institutes

The Supreme Court has upheld the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE)'s decision to seek annual performance reports from Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) [The National Council For Teachers Education v Association of NCTE Approved College Trust and Ors]

A Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe passed the judgment on an appeal filed by NCTE against a Delhi High Court verdict that in 2023 quashed a 2019 notice requiring TEIs to file Performance Appraisal Reports (PARs).

The High Court had agreed with the contention made by TEIs that NCTE's executive committee could not have introduced such a requirement without the general body's consent.

Th top court found that the general body, at its 48th meeting, had resolved to replace the earlier requirement of "Annual Renewal of Recognition" with PAR, and authorised NCTE to implement it through a proforma of its own design.

Thus, the apex Court said executive committee was only carrying that mandate forward when it issued the notice. It questioned how the regulatory body could be restrained from seeking PARs.

"We fail to understand as to how a regulatory measure of a statutory body, empowered to achieve planned and coordinated development of teacher education system in the country could be restrained from calling upon the TEIs to file Performance Appraisal Report," the top court said.

On September 22, 2019, the member secretary of NCTE's executive committee had issued a public notice making it mandatory for TEIs to upload PAR and warned of action in case of non-compliance.

In the ruling delivered on September 3, the Court held that a regulator's authority to initiate such measure need not flow from express statutory text alone.

"Even without a specific empowerment under the statute, such a regulatory measure can always be incidental and ancillary to the duties and functions of a regulator," it observed.

The Court also observed TEIs and NCTE itself must be recognised as a sixth and seventh category of "duty bearers" under the right to education framework, alongside government, local authorities, schools, parents and teachers.

"We have no hesitation in declaring that the duties to be performed by the Council and the bodies that are constituted along with it, such as the Executive Committee and the Regional Committees, are perhaps the highest of all the duty bearers," the Court said.

The top court went on to caution against judicial overreach in the functioning of regulators.

"Constitutional courts also have a positive duty to ensure that Authorities, more particularly, the regulators do exercise their powers effectively, efficiently and in an accountable manner. In this context, Courts cannot adopt a technical or a pedantic view of the action taken by the regulators," it said.

[Read Judgment]