CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has directed the state government to resume the 2017 teacher appointment process and recruit 410 candidates, who had cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), in government schools, before going ahead with the 2023 notification.
A division bench led by the Acting Chief Justice recently passed the orders on petitions filed by the 410 candidates who took the TET and completed their certificate verification between 2013 and 2017 but were not given the appointment orders.
“All the writ petitions are allowed with a direction to the state government to continue the appointment process left midway in 2017, insofar as the petitioners are concerned and appoint them as secondary grade/ graduate teachers as expeditiously as possible without causing further delay,” the bench said in the order.
It further directed the government that these 410 candidates shall be appointed depending upon their respective merit/ ranking as per the weightage method, their TET scores and the rule of reservation.
The TET-score based appointment was introduced following the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. The process for recruitment was started in 2013 and completed in 2017 but appointments were not made. Meanwhile, the government issued notification for appointing teachers based on a competitive examination in 2023. Challenging this notification, they approached the High Court.
Advocate N Kavitha Rameshwar, appearing for some of the petitioners, submitted that the action of the government to ignore the 410 candidates from the purview of selection and appointment is clearly arbitrary and the respondent authorities cannot be allowed to proceed with the appointment as per the 2023 notification.
The court concurred with her saying the action of the state has been most arbitrary, unreasonable and opposed to the doctrine of legitimate expectation, thus violating the petitioners’ fundamental rights under Articles 114 and 16 of the Constitution.