Chennai: HC stays termination of services of ‘unqualified’ teachers

Chennai: The Madras high court has restrained the state government and the institutions concerned from terminating the services of the teachers (appellants), who have not passed the teachers eligibility test so far.

A division bench comprising Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and Krishnan Ramasamy passed the interim order on a batch of appeals filed by P. Indira Gandhi and 7 other teachers, challenging an order of a single judge dated April 30, 2019. Justice S.M.Subramaniam had on April 30 rejected a plea from P.Indira Gandhi and three others to restrain the authorities from terminating them from their service as teachers from the Kasthuba Gandhi Baliga Vidyalaya Residential School in Tiruvannamalai district for the reason of not passing Tamil Nadu Teachers Eligibility Test. The judge had also directed the authorities to issue show cause notice to all the unqualified teachers, setting out the reasons including the failure on the part of the teachers to pass the TET within 2 weeks, granting 10 days for the teachers to submit their respective explanations and on receipt of the explanations, if any, from the teachers, speaking orders were directed to be issued by the competent authority strictly in accordance with the provisions of the statutes, service rules, regulations and government orders as applicable, the judge had added. Aggrieved the teachers filed the present appeals.

They contended that when the statute provides for number of opportunity to acquire the TET for the teachers appointed in state service with a direction to every state government to conduct TET at least once or twice every year, there cannot be any lapse attributed against the teachers already appointed that they have not passed the test when the state government has not conducted sufficient number of TET whereas it conducted only three times over the period of 8 or 9 years.

This court has not appreciated the fact that for the year 2019, the government has issued notification to conduct TET without declaring the date of examination and all the teachers have submitted their application to participate in the examination. While so, when they were going to appear for the TET to be conducted by the government, there cannot be any show cause notice against them in order to terminate their services particularly when the TET was sought to be conducted after more than 2 years, they added.

Directing the appellants to write the TET, to be held on June 8 and 9, the bench said till then no action should be taken against them. The bench posted to June 12, further hearing of the case.