Supreme Court allows UP govt to fill up 69,000 posts for teachers as per results declared in May

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Uttar Pradesh government to fill up vacancies for 69,000 assistant basic teachers in the state as per the results it declared in May this year. A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit dismissed a batch of petitions including the one filed by the ‘‘Uttar Pradesh Prathmik Shiksha Mitra Association’’ challenging the Allahabad High Court decision to uphold the cut-off marks for selection of assistant basic teachers in the state. The association and several other individual ‘‘Shiksha Mitras’’ had challenged the Uttar Pradesh government’s order of January 7, 2019 by which the qualifying marks for the Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination 2019 were fixed at 65 and 60 for general and reserved categories respectively. The bench, in its judgement, said it has recorded the submission of the state government that a ‘‘Shiksha Mitra’’ who has been unable to crack the test, would be given another chance to compete in the next selection. The top court said it will be open to the state to give another chance to ‘‘Shiksha Mitras’’ to compete for selection as assistant basic teachers. The court had earlier sought the state’s reply on pleas challenging the Allahabad High Court verdict upholding Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to keep higher cut-off marks in the appointment of 69,000 assistant basic teachers. It had asked the state government to explain as to why it changed the earlier criteria of 45 per cent cut-off marks for general category and 40 percent cut-off marks for reserved category. The state submitted that the cut off was increased to previous selection process to attract best candidates and there was nothing illegal in its decision. Several petitions were filed challenging the May 6 decision of the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court which paved the way for completing the process for appointment assistant basic teachers. It had directed the state government to complete the process within the next three months. On 25 July, 2017, the top court had asked the state government to cancel the recruitment of 1,37, 517 teachers to the post of TET Assistant Teacher but give them the benefit of experience in two recruitments. Six months later, on 17 January, 2018, the government had issued the order for the written examination for the assistant teachers’’ posts for the first time to hire 69,000 teachers.