VIJAYAWADA: Minister for HRD and IT Nara Lokesh has said steps will be taken to fill all the vacant teacher posts in the State by the commencement of the next academic year.
Replying to a question on vacant teacher posts in the State Assembly on Friday, the HRD Minister said a total of 13,497 teacher posts are vacant as of June 2024 in the School Education Department. “Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has signed the Mega DSC file soon after assuming office as promised. Our aim is to fill all the vacant teacher posts without any legal tangles,” he replied.
The question was raised by YSRC MLAs during the Question Hour in writing though they are not attending the Assembly session. However, considering the importance of the subject, NDA members Lokam Madhavi, Kakarla Suresh and Palla Srinivasa Rao raised the issue, while mentioning how teachers had suffered during the previous dispensation headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Lokesh said details of all the cases pending since 1994 have been collected and the State government has decided to issue the DSC notification without any hurdles. “The posts will be filled within six months from the date of issuance of Mega DSC notification,” he said.
Teacher recruitment was conducted by the respective Zilla Parishads before 1994. During the TDP dispensation, 15 DSCs were conducted to fill 1.8 lakh teacher posts. “The previous YSRC government did not fill even a single vacant teacher post,” he said, mentioning that a notification was issued on February 12, 2024, just a few months before the Assembly elections, to deceive DSC aspirants and the process did not move forward at all.
In the name of merger of schools, the previous regime subjected poor students and teachers to various kinds of problems. “The Commissioner of School Education is holding discussions with the teacher unions on GO 117 issued by the previous regime to know the facts. We will bring in an alternative to the GO 117 as teachers should not be subjected to any kind of harassment,” he asserted.
Lokesh promised to lift all the false cases registered by the previous regime against teachers for taking part in protests to highlight their problems after discussing the matter with the Director General of Police.