An irate bench of the Bombay High Court on 11th February, 2025 directed the Maharashtra Government to withhold the salary of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Solapur Zilla Parishad for a month. The recalcitrant CEO had refused to honour the HC’s earlier directive to pay teachers their salary and is now under risk of losing his.

The division bench of Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Ashwin Bhobe noted that the teachers had worked for over eight months without pay and this in spite of an earlier order of 26th November, 2024, that had mandated the CEO to pay their salaries by 14th January, 2025. When the matter was reviewed on 28th January, 2025, it was found that the teachers were yet to be paid their salary.

Expressing their strong disapproval , the court stated that the CEO should experience what it feels like to be deprived of a salary. The bench ruled that the CEO’s salary would be stopped until the teachers received their dues and adjourned the hearing to 5th March, 2025.

The instant case had arisen by way of a petition filed by three teachers’ challenging their termination. They had initially faced hurdles in participating in the Teachers Aptitude and Intelligence Test (TAIT) but were later appointed in May 2024. However, after allegations of fraud in the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) of 2022, surfaced, they were dismissed in October 2024.