The future of thousands of aspirants for teaching job in the primary education department is affected by a Supreme Court order. Hearing the petition of the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.)/ Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) Merit Federation, the court on Thursday had stayed the recruitment process of primary teachers. The B.Ed. / TET Merit federation has challenged the recruitment of primary teachers on the ground that the education department is using the criteria of year wise seniority of doing the qualifying examination (B.Ed.) for appointing teachers.
The petitioners has challenged this on the plea that department is not considering merit in the recruitment. The court asked the state education department to clarify its position in one month time and issued stay orders in the process of recruitment. The court order would affect recruitment process of about 1500 posts in the primary education department. The court order however would not cover those candidates who have joined their duties.
The Primary education director Seema Jaunsari told The Pioneer that the department has not yet received the copy of court orders. She said that appropriate action would be taken after carefully examining the order. The State president of B.Ed. / TET federation Baldev Singh said that the education department should challenge the orders of the court. He said that unemployed B.Ed. / TET graduates would also present their case before the court.
It is worth mentioning here that after a protracted struggle of B.Ed/ TET federation, the state education department started a recruitment drive in 2794 posts of primary teachers. On the issue of eligibility criteria for recruitment drive the unemployed B.Ed. / TET candidates split in to two groups. The faction supporting merit took the matter to Uttarakhand High Court (HC) which ruled in favour of year wise seniority in the process of selection. In the recruitment drive 266 posts remained vacant which the department was planning to fill from the candidates of waiting list.
Similarly 389 new posts were approved by the state government and 850 posts were created in disaster affected areas. There are more than 25000 B.Ed./ TET qualified unemployed candidates in the state. This recruitment drive could be the last chance for these youths to become primary teachers as the National Council of Teacher’s Education (NCTE) has issued guidelines to the state government to ensure that only Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed) qualified candidates are employed as primary teachers.
