RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Dec.2: The process for the appointment to high school teachers, which started in 2016, will take more time to get completed due to legal intricacies.
In a fresh development, the Supreme Court today directed Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh, to prepare a merit list including those who have been already appointed and those who have become the original petitioners in this matter after the public notice of the high court.
The order came from a division bench headed by Justice M.R.Shah after the bench heard a contempt petition of Soni Kumari and others.
On behalf of Soni Kumari, it was said that the order of the Supreme Court was to revise the merit list subject-wise and category-wise according to the published cut-off of the last selected candidate, which was not published in this way by the state government and the JSSC. This is a violation of the order of the Supreme Court.
On behalf of Soni Kumari, senior advocate Ranjit Kumar and Lalit Kumar Singh, appeared. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appeared on behalf of the state government.
The appointment process got trapped in a legal battle after the Jharkhand High Court in September 2019 stayed the appointment of teachers terming the way of appointment unconstitutional and the Supreme Court in August this year also upheld the decision.
Though the Supreme Court gave relief to those already appointed through the process started through disputed High School Recruitment Advertisement No. 21/ 2016, it did not differ with the view of Jharkhand High Court taking the unconstitutional way adopted for the recruitment. The Supreme Court, in its order had declared the Jharkhand High Court did nothing wrong by saying that the provision of 100 per cent reservation in the third and fourth grade is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court directed the State government to make a merit list for the entire state. For this subject wise minimum cut off marks have to be made the basis beforehand. The entire state was asked to take into consideration without dividing them into non-scheduled and scheduled districts.
In the year 2016, the recruitment process of 17572 teachers was started in the state. In this, eight thousand teachers have been appointed on the merit list prepared at the district level. This appointment has been done on the basis of the recruitment policy of the year 2016 on the basis of scheduled and non-scheduled districts. The cadre of high school teachers was district level.
