CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has directed the state school education secretary to appear before the court and explain why 400 secondary grade/graduate teachers who have cleared TET in 2013 cannot be considered as a separate group while recruiting 2,222 new teachers.
A division bench of Justices R Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq Friday issued the direction on a batch of petitions filed by aspirants who cleared TET in 2013 but haven’t yet been given an appointment.
The bench said the school education secretary shall explain to the court whether the 400 TET-cleared eligible teachers can be treated as a single bloc within the 2,222 posts, for which, the notification has been issued. The petitioners said they have been waiting for an appointment in government schools since 2013 when they cleared TET and completed the certificate verification in the following year.
They sought the recruitment be made based on TET marks and TET seniority, giving first preference to them without resorting to any competitive examination as a measure of equity and fairness as well as on the foundation of the doctrine of promissory estoppels and legitimate expectation. The teachers prayed for an order to declare them entitled to be appointed as secondary grade/graduate teachers without resorting to any competitive examination as stated in the 2018 G.O.