Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

A dispute over the recruitment of 69,000 government school teachers in Uttar Pradesh escalated to the Supreme Court of India. On September 9, the apex court overruled an order of the Lucknow high court to draw up a fresh list of recruitees in response to petitions alleging that affirmative action rules were not followed in the recruitment process.

In December 2018, the UP government notified recruitment of 69,000 assistant teachers for the state’s 1.33 lakh government schools. In January 2019, 4.1 lakh candidates wrote the qualifying exam, the results of which were published in May, 2020.

A total of 146,000 candidates cleared the exam which stipulated varying cut-offs for differing categories of candidates. For unreserved (general) candidates, the cut-off was 67.11 percent; for Other Backward Castes (OBC) 66.73 percent; and 61.01 percent for Scheduled Castes (SC) candidates.

The final list of 67,867 selected candidates was released in two batches — June and October 2020. The remaining 1,133 positions for ST (Scheduled Tribes) candidates were left vacant due to lack of minimally qualified applicants.

Almost immediately there was a chorus of demands for category-wise disclosure of successful candidates. It was alleged that over 50 percent of selected teachers were drawn from the unreserved (merit) category, with only 3.86 percent instead of the mandatory 27 percent being drawn from the OBC category, and 16.2 percent rather than the mandated 21 percent drawn from SC/ST categories. It was alleged that 15,800 seats which should have been awarded to OBC and SC/ST graduates were allotted to the general category candidates.

In July 2020, this allegation was heard by the National Commission for Other Backward Classes. After enquiry, the commission found discrepancies in the criteria adopted for defining OBC and SC/ST for the exam. “There were 34,589 unreserved seats in the examination. As per real figures (sic), 18,851 OBC candidates qualified for admission under the unreserved merit category. However, the first list prepared by the education ministry had only 13,007 OBC candidates in the unreserved category. The remaining 5,844 OBC students were placed in reserved category despite their having qualified in the unreserved category,” said the commission. As a result the OBC reserved category was reduced by 5,623 seats.

On January 5, 2022, the ministry prepared a list of 6,800 candidates who would have qualified but for misclassification, and promised to issue appointment letters “shortly”. However, since it was the year of legislative assembly elections and with the model code of conduct in force, the letters were not issued.

Therefore, the government’s inaction was protested in a petition filed in the Allahabad high court. In March 2023, the court observed that there were several anomalies in the reservation process of the examination and directed the state to issue a new composite list of successful candidates within a period of three months.

During the hearing before the Allahabad high court, the state government acknowledged that the Reservation Act had not been properly implemented. In response, a revised selection list was issued on January 2, 2022 adding 6,800 more appointments from reserved category candidates.

This order in turn aggrieved general category candidates whose number reduced by an equivalent amount. They petitioned the Supreme Court which on September 9, 2023 temporarily stayed the Allahabad high court’s order. It also directed the state government to issue a brief on its position by end September (that is yet to happen).

The high court had directed that the process of issuing a new list be completed within three months. The only protection it offered to assistant teachers appointed under the earlier list was that they could retain their positions for the current academic year. However if the previous lists are annulled, these teachers may lose their jobs.

In Uttar Pradesh where unemployment is rife, government school teacher jobs in which salaries range from Rs.35,400 for a primary teacher to Rs.61,700per month for higher secondary, are highly prized. Therefore the anguish of candidates selected in the first list, who may lose their employment when the OBCs quota is expanded, is real.

This has also become a politically sensitive issue as OBCs comprise nearly 50 percent of the state’s population. In the recent Lok Sabha election, the BJP suffered a severe setback with its representation in the Lok Sabha dropping to 33 seats from the 61 it won in General Election 2019.

If the OBC quota is not expanded to appoint 6,800 additional OBC teachers, it is likely to have adverse repercussions for the incumbent Yogi Adityanath government in the legislative assembly election scheduled for early next year. Yet at the centre of this story is the sorry plight of assistant teachers whose future has been undecided for so long.