Prior approval from the relevant education board is mandatory before an MPO-listed non-government secondary school can be moved from one place to another. But the High Court has ruled that a decision to cancel a headteacher’s MPO and stop his pay and allowances, holding him responsible solely for such a relocation after he had informed the authorities, was without lawful authority and illegal.
The High Court gave the verdict making absolute a rule issued in the case of Md Mozammel Haque v the State.
The verdict was delivered on July 10, 2025, by a bench of Justice Md Habibul Gani and Justice Sheikh Tahsin Ali, and a copy has recently been published on the Supreme Court website. It was written by Justice Sheikh Tahsin Ali.
According to the published verdict, Char Niamat Ideal High School in Phulpur upazila, Mymensingh, was founded in 1977. Because the school had no playground for its pupils, local people and the school’s managing committee decided in 2000 to move it to a suitable site.
After the managing committee took the decision to relocate on July 11 that year, headteacher Md Mozammel Haque applied on July 19 to the chairman of the Dhaka Education Board for permission to move the school building.
In response, the Dhaka Education Board gave permission on March 23, 2002, to move the school to the new site. Following instructions from the education ministry, however, the permission was cancelled on October 6 the same year. Meanwhile, a three-storey school building had been built at the new site and classes had begun there. Later, in line with the ministry’s instructions, the school was moved back to its original site.
Headteacher Md Mozammel Haque was then served a show-cause notice on July 7, 2008, accused of concealing the relocation of the school building and harming the quality of education at the school.
The notice asked him to explain within seven days why his MPO should not be cancelled for concealing information. The headteacher replied on July 17.
On November 10, 2008, an order signed by an assistant director of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, citing no specific reason, cancelled Md Mozammel Haque’s MPO and stopped his pay and allowances.
He then applied to the directorate’s director general to withdraw the order. Getting no remedy, he filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2009. After a preliminary hearing, the court issued a rule. The petitioner later filed a supplementary application in the pending writ. After reviewing both sides’ arguments and documents, the High Court made the rule absolute.
In the verdict, the High Court declared illegal the decision to cancel Md Mozammel Haque’s MPO and stop his pay and allowances. It directed the authorities concerned to pay all the salary and other benefits due to him up to the end of his term of service, and ordered that a copy of the verdict be sent to them immediately.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report