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SC quashes teacher order in Assam by Samanwaya Rautray

The Supreme Court today vacated a 2010 Gauhati High Court order that banned recruitment of elementary school (lower and upper primary) teachers in Assam.

This will pave the way for recruitment of some 1,00,000 teachers in the state.

The high court had on March 5, 2010, restrained the state from recruiting teachers on a petition that challenged illegal appointments of 3,813 (3,147 in lower primary and 666 in upper primary schools) teachers from 1991 to 2001.

The high court had asked the state government to screen their cases and accommodate whoever was eligible to become a teacher and imposed a blanket ban on any teacher recruitment, whether on regular or contractual basis, till this exercise was over.

Today, appearing for the state government, senior counsel Ashok Desai pleaded with a two-judge bench of the apex court, comprising Justices Deepak Verma and K.S. Radhakrishnan, to lift the stay.

“The high court, under the garb of protecting the purported legal rights of few illegally, irregularly-appointed teachers, has actually deprived the future of 41 lakh elementary school students who are entitled to the fundamental right to education, accrued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009,” the state argued.

Additional advocate-general of Assam Devajit Saikia told The Telegraph that it was a landmark verdict by the Supreme Court to lift the blanket ban on appointment of teachers in the state’s elementary schools.

“The Assam government filed a miscellaneous petition in the high court on August 23, 2011, to lift the ban. The high court accordingly gave a verdict on January 25 this year, allowing the state government to fill up only 12,000 posts. The government then filed a special leave application in the apex court against the high court,” he said, adding that the apex court today admitted the application and quashed the high court’s latest verdict on appointment of schoolteachers.

Saikia said because of the blanket ban, the government had not been able fill up the vacant posts of schoolteachers in elementary schools since 2010. “According to the provisions of the Right to Education Act, Assam is required to fill up 95,159 posts of schoolteachers,” he added.

Desai contended that the high court, without realising that there was a shortfall of 95,159 teachers in the state, as mandated under the Right to Education Act (RTE), had permitted the state to recruit only 12,819 regular teachers.

The state, which requires 1,24,236 teachers for its 35,065 lower primary schools and another 84,869 teachers for its 5,863 upper primary schools, had, in fact, sought to fill up 68,351 posts of elementary schoolteachers to fulfil RTE norms. The RTE mandates every lower primary school to have two teachers.

Judged by that yardstick, the high court decision will lead to a closure of 12,739 schools, Desai said. As many as 7,691 schools will have only a single teacher, as opposed to the minimum two mandated by the RTE, and another 12,739 will not even have a single teacher, he added.

Desai claimed that the state would land up in the list of RTE defaulters and 28,793 posts of teachers, which have accumulated in the last two years under the Central Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, shall lapse if they are not filled up by March 31, 2012.

The state claimed that no appointments had been made in elementary schools in Assam for the past several years on account of various interim orders passed by the high court from time to time.

The state claimed that since the court decision, the cabinet had taken a decision on February 26, 2011 to frame a policy of absorbing teachers who had been working since 1991 on the basis of the findings of a screening committee about their eligibility. According to the decision, those who have been appointed on the basis of fake certificates and been working on fake appointment letters will not be absorbed. Only those who have valid degrees and appointment letters from the competent authorities, even if they were appointed in excess of sanctioned vacancies, would be absorbed. They would be absorbed according to recommendations of the screening committee, the state assured, urging the court to lift the stay.

“Today’s verdict will bring cheers to those who recently cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test,” Saikia said.