Hyderabad: The four-decade long pending demand of unified service rules for teachers has finally been resolved with President Pranab Mukherjee giving his nod on Thursday.
Around 20,000 teachers in TS and AP are expected to benefit with uniform service rules; their promotions had been stopped for years.
There have been different service rules for government teachers and panchayat raj teachers since 1980s. The latest move provides a common set.
There were two kinds of state-run schools in undivided AP — one managed by the state government and other by the panchayat raj department.
Teachers were appointed separately to these schools till 1998, but that year, the government started appointing teachers by conducting a single competitive exam.
However, government teachers opposed this and approached the High Court, and later the Supreme Court, following which the government orders were struck down.
The teachers’ objection was they should get promotions before PR teachers.
The two sets of teachers have been fighting the case in Supreme Court since 2005. The court ruled in 2015 to frame unified service rules for both the teachers.
The TS and AP governments initiated the process to bring uniform service rules. The Centre too responded positively due to which the union home and law ministries cleared the rules recently. The rules were then referred to President for approval.
Teachers’ union leader and Chief Whip in the TS Legislative Council Paturi Sudhakar Reddy thanked Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao for his relentless efforts over the last three years to convince the Centre to approve the unified service rules.
He expressed happiness over the President finally giving the nod.
