Teachers pin hopes on CM to resolve GO 317 mess

Hyderabad: GO-317 affected employees are pinning their hopes on their meeting with Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, after the Cabinet sub-committee examining the matter reportedly rejected demands to consider their nativity before transferring them to other districts.

They are banking on the assurance that Revanth Reddy had given to them in his capacity as TPCC president.

“We have filed two cases in the High Court — WP 333856/2021 and WP 5007/2022 — challenging GO 317 and the 2018 Presidential Order, respectively, making both the state and Central governments parties. As of now, our hopes rest on meeting the Chief Minister,” said T. Vijay Kumar, president of the GO 317 Affected Employees and Teachers Union.

When contacted, minister C. Damodara Rajanarsimha told Deccan Chronicle, “The government is positive and wants to resolve the issue. A PIL is pending in the High Court on the question of nativity. Legal opinion is being sought.”

K. Venugopal, former president of APTF (Andhra Pradesh Teachers Federation) in the combined state, said that GO 317 resulted in seniors being allocated to city centres while the younger teachers were sent to remote areas. This has led to a situation, where there will be no vacancies in these districts for 20 to 25 years.

Though he claimed that the BRS government had tried to maintain uniformity in vacancies across districts, he questioned the need for such uniformity. “Even the recent DSC did not recruit equally in all districts,” he said.

Venugopal said the government could have told the employees they would be accommodated in their native districts as staff retire and others are promoted. The government need not seek changes to the Presidential Order to resolve this issue, as some suggest.

“When Vizianagaram district was formed by including parts of Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam districts decades back, employees were given a choice to opt for the new district, and the government recruited afresh to fill vacancies. But the BRS resorted to coercive measures to implement its agenda. Some recruitment is needed to resolve this,” he said.

Chava Ravi, the general secretary of UTF (United Teachers Federation), opined that solving spouse cases and those with health issues would address the problems of only 2,200 of the nearly 10,000 employees affected by GO 317.

“The argument that accepting these demands will lead to a lack of vacancies in urban areas doesn’t hold, as there are 16,000 posts yet to be filled, even after the recent recruitment of 6,500 teachers. This is what the BRS had also claimed,” Ravi explained.

A teacher who served as an secondary grade teacher (SGT) in a primary school for 20 to 25 years was considered a junior after being promoted to school assistant to the high school and sent to a remote location. Such arbitrariness occurred because only seniority was considered, Ravi said.

Citing how governments violated court rulings when it suited them, Boina Nageshwar Rao, working president of the JAC, said that the promotions given to SGTs into school assistant positions recently violated a High Court order mandating passing the TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) as a precondition.

Union members said the 1.9 lakh teachers voted for the Congress. “We’ve been trying to meet the Chief Minister for three months now, and we are hopeful for a resolution if we can meet him,” Nageshwar Rao said, adding that the Rajanarsimha-headed Cabinet sub-committee initially told them they were willing to sanction 200 to 300 posts per district to solve the problem.

Teachers also pointed out that, to reduce the number of affected employees, they were told that the place of work for those transferred before GO 317 would remain their native place. An office note issued on July 30, 2024, used the word "dislocated," which was later changed to "affected" in GO 317 after being pointed out.

The government’s website, created to seek opinions and applications, did not initially have an option for locals, which was included only after being pointed out. It also did not have a provision for confirming submissions, leading to multiple submissions.

This artificially inflated the number of affected employees, which could be filtered using employee IDs. Lawyers who previously argued in favour of the affected employees are now giving contrary opinions, said Vijay Kumar.