CUTTACK: The Supreme Court has declined to interfere with a series of Orissa High Court orders granting eligibility for full grant-in-aid (GIA) under the GIA Order, 1994 to employees of aided educational institutions, dealing a setback to the Odisha government.A two-judge bench of the apex court comprising Justice J.K. Maheswari and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar, in an order on March 25, dismissed Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) arising out of a batch of appeals filed by both the state government and private parties challenging the high court’s March 19, 2025 ruling..In the landmark high court judgment of March 19, 2025 Justice Biraja Prasanna Satapathy held that unaided schools, girls’ schools, higher secondary schools and colleges could not be denied the benefit of GIA under the 1994 order if their cases had been duly recommended by the concerned directorates prior to the repeal of the scheme.The GIA Order, 1994 provided for full salary grants to eligible teaching and non-teaching staff of private educational institutions. It was repealed on February 5, 2004 and replaced with a new order that limited the grant to partial assistance.Justice Satapathy, while deciding over 100 appeals arising from orders of the State Education Tribunal, upheld tribunal decisions allowing grant-in-aid claims and set aside those rejecting such claims.
He directed state authorities to extend the benefits under the 1994 order and complete the entire exercise within six months.Agreeing with this approach, the Supreme Court said, “the direction as issued by the High Court is completely in consonance with the reasoning as specified therein,” adding that the discretion had rightly been left to the state to assess each case based on verification and relevant court orders.The Supreme Court also underlined that it was not inclined to take a different view, noting that “numerous Special Leave Petitions, more than approximately 60 in number… have already been dismissed” by it.Even after hearing the Advocate General Pitambari Acharya for the state at length, the court said it found no grounds to revisit its earlier stance. Consequently, the appeals filed by the state were dismissed, while those filed by private individuals were disposed of with directions to follow the High Court’s framework.Since the matters had remained pending before the apex court, it further directed that the verification exercise be completed by the state within six months from the date of its order.The ruling brings closure to a long-running dispute and is likely to affect a significant number of grant-in-aid claims in Odisha.
