Mumbai, February 19 The state of Maharashtra has significantly relaxed several eligibility conditions under the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) for faculty in government and aided diploma and degree institutes under the Directorate of Technical Education, officials said on Thursday.
This relief will ensure that CAS benefits are retroactively granted to certain lecturers who were regularized from contractual or temporary appointments, and who were given until December 31, 2023, to complete refresher courses. The government has also waived the mandatory PhD requirement for placement in a higher pay band under CAS for lecturers appointed before March 5, 2010.
The new relaxations concerning academic, training, and qualification requirements for promotions were issued through a GR (Government Resolution) issued on Wednesday.
This move follows an order by the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal on February 7, 2025, which partly allowed petitions filed by lecturers challenging a Government Resolution (GR) of June 2022 and quashed a related circular regarding CAS norms.
Citing the tribunal's directions and representations received from faculty, the state had constituted a five-member committee under Dr. Pramod Naik, Joint Director, Technical Education (Mumbai region), to review the June 2022 GR.
Acting on the committee's recommendations submitted in October 2025, the government has now amended multiple CAS clauses, relaxing academic, training, and qualification requirements for several categories of teachers, particularly those regularized from contractual or temporary service.
One of the most significant relaxations concerns lecturers who were regularized from contractual or temporary appointments through government decisions taken in 2015-16. Such faculty had been granted until December 31, 2023, to complete refresher or training courses, in line with extensions reportedly granted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
Those who completed the required courses by the extended deadline will now receive CAS benefits, effective retroactively. Even those who complete the courses later will be granted benefits from the date of completion, effectively protecting a large pool of faculty from earlier disqualification, according to the GR issued on Wednesday.
In another major move, the government has waived the mandatory PhD requirement for placement in the higher “Pay Band-4” under CAS for lecturers appointed before March 5, 2010.
According to the June 2022 GR, a PhD was mandatory, in line with AICTE norms, for grant of Pay Band-4 under the Sixth Pay Commission structure. The latest GR now exempts pre-2010 appointees from this condition.
Furthermore, lecturers appointed in 2003 and 2004 in Science and Humanities streams will now be granted CAS benefits based on MA or MSc qualifications, as was the earlier practice under the Fifth Pay Commission, instead of being subjected to subsequently introduced higher qualification benchmarks.
In yet another concession, contractual or temporary lecturers appointed in 2003-04 have been exempted from the mandatory requirement of ME/MTech for CAS eligibility.
Those appointed after 2003-04 have been given a three-year window from the date of the present GR to acquire the prescribed qualification, failing which, benefits will not accrue, but a retrospective financial advantage will be granted upon compliance, the order said.
The GR also allows English lecturers regularized from contractual service in 2015-16 to avail full CAS benefits based on the educational qualifications that were applicable at the time of their appointment, rather than stricter norms introduced later.