While the axed contractual teachers in the State are continuing their agitation across the State demanding their reinstatement, the Cuttack Bench of State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) on Tuesday concluded hearing on a batch of applications that have challenged the Government’s 2014 circular on appointment of contract teachers.
The tribunal’s judicial and administrative members reserved their verdict after the counsels of the applicants and Government concluded their arguments. The SAT in November last year had restrained the government in going ahead with the appointments, but it had allowed the Government to go ahead with the selection process.
The Government’s decision to reduce the maximum age limit of the aspirants from 42 to 32 and fixing a minimum of 50 per cent in the graduation for eligibility to apply for contractual teachers was challenged in the SAT soon after the Government advertisement was published for recruitment last year.
The decision to reduce the maximum age limit and fixing minimum marks in graduation level for the aspirants to apply for the post were made in contravention to the Contractual Appointment Rules of 1993, argued the counsels of the applicants seeking the tribunal’s intervention in it.
Despite a stay imposed by the Orissa High Court on recruitment of contractual teachers in June, the Government had gone ahead in appointing nearly 4,000 contract teachers, for which a contempt of court petition was filed against the School and Mass Education Secretary.
The Secretary Ranjana Chopra, however, told the High Court last week that the Government has in the meantime annulled those appointments.