Telangana High Court on Tuesday directed the state government to reconsider engaging Bed-qualified candidates as secondary grade teachers (SGT) (DC File Photo)
Hyderabad: A service bench of the Telangana High Court on Tuesday directed the state government to reconsider engaging Bed-qualified candidates as secondary grade teachers (SGT) based upon the recruitment notification issued in 2008.
In a litigation spanning over 15 years, BEd candidates in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh questioned an order of the government reserving 30 per cent of the posts for DEd candidates.
A battery of senior counsels, L. Ravichander, G. Vidya Sagar, and Goda Siva, pointed to various illegalities in the recruitment process. Senior counsel Ravichander point outed that the GO providing reservation for the DEd candidates to the exclusion of graduates was contrary to the law of classification.
Ravichander said that any classification into public service must fall or fail by the test of Article 16(4) of the Constitution. He said that the classification was an inelegant attempt to change the rules after the game had started.
Vidya Sagar pointed out that the sibling state of AP was more proactive and had employed the candidates on a contract basis till attaining the age of 60. He pointed to the repeated litigation, and reiterated that the government should consider absorbing the petitioners against the unfilled vacancies since the controversy was caused by the government.
Goda Siva said that the notification could at best be prospective and ought not to have been applied to the recruitment. He said the notification was not published.
Special counsel for the AP government, Govind Reddy, the it was not mandatory to publish the notification. He stated, “unlike the State of Telangana, the State of Andhra Pradesh is a welfare state” and pointed out that the government had taken a humane view of the matter and engaged the eligible candidates on a contract basis.
After a hearing for over three hours, the bench of Abhinandana Shavili and Namavarapu Rajeshwar Rao pointed out that the writ petitions emanated from a common cause of action but while candidates were given some benefits in Andhra Pradesh, the same was denied to the candidates in Telangana state which is unjust. The bench accordingly directed the Telangana state government to reconsider the issue as was done by the government of AP within a period of four weeks.
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
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