Demanding reinstatement, the members of the association of guest teachers have been staging sit-in at State Education Directorate for the past seven days.
The vice-president of the association Harish Arya said on Tuesday that more than 4700 guest teachers in different parts of the State are awaiting renewal of their contract for the past many months while the Government is indifferent.
Mahavir Singh Chauhan, a guest teacher, said that the education department’s move to give additional weightage to the old guest teachers in the selection process of the guest teachers is not acceptable to the association. “Our salary for the month of March is yet to be paid. We want nothing less than reinstatement,’’ he said.
The recruitment of the guest teachers was done during the time of the Harish Rawat Government when about six thousand such teachers were appointed in different schools in 2015.
They were appointed for a period of nine months or end of the academic session on purely contractual basis. When their contract was terminated in March 2016 they started a massive agitation which forced then Congress-helmed Government to reinstate them in their services.
The order was, however, challenged in the court which cancelled their reinstatement. The matter then went to a bench of HC which asked the State Government to initiate a proper recruitment process to fill the vacant posts of the teachers in the government schools.
The court meanwhile granted temporary relief to the guest teachers and allowed them to work till March 2018.
As per the HC order, the State Education Department terminated the contract of these teachers in March this year after which thousand of such teachers have been on the stir path.