A primary school teacher paid Rs 25 a month for 21 years and nothing for the next 12 has found justice.

The high court has given the North 24-Parganas Primary School Council chairman four weeks to regularise the services of Papiya Gupta.

She joined Agoripara Primary School in Kanchrapara, North 24-Parganas, as a temporary teacher on January 15, 1975. She was paid a monthly salary of Rs 25 till 1996, when the school became a government-funded institution.

The government did not regularise the services of six teachers, including Gupta. The services of the other five have since been regularised but 55-year-old Gupta — who joined the school at 22 — is yet to get her appointment letter.

Since 2001, when she first moved the high court, two judges have ordered the primary education department to regularise her services but the council has not budged.

The case is almost a rerun of that of Pranab Kumar Sengupta who was paid Rs 21.75 a month for teaching in Patipukur Basak Bangan Primary School from March 1973 to July this year. He received his first pay cheque after a hike on August 8 following a 15-year legal battle.

According to Gupta’s lawyer Uttam Majumdar, the district primary school authorities told her in 1996 that her services would be regularised. “But when the school appointed two other teachers in 2001, she moved the high court.”

In 2003, Justice Pratap Roy asked the primary school education department to appoint Gupta immediately, Majumdar told Justice Soumitra Pal on Tuesday.

The lawyer also told the court that after Justice Roy’s order, the then principal secretary of the department had ordered the district inspector of schools, North 24-Parganas, to appoint Gupta. "But the district inspector did not carry out the order."

Gupta waited a couple of years before moving the high court again. In 2006, Justice Asim Banerjee directed the government to carry out the earlier order.

"This time, too, the principal secretary asked the district inspector and the council chairman to regularise Gupta’s service. They did not obey the order and said if Gupta was appointed, it could be used as a precedent in several other cases. The principal secretary then advised the inspector and the chairman to treat Papiya’s case as a special one but they did not do so," said Majumdar in court.

In his order, Justice Pal said: "The court is giving only four weeks’ time to the government to carry out the order. The government is directed to give the petitioner appointment with effect from 1996."