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Synopsis

The Supreme Court on Monday, September 9, has stayed the Allahabad High Court directive for the Uttar Pradesh government to create a fresh selection list for 69,000 assistant teachers based on the Assistant Teachers Recruitment Examination (ATRE) 2019 across the state.

The bench, comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, while putting the high court's direction on hold, issued notices to the Uttar Pradesh government and the Secretary of the Department of Basic Education in a plea filed by Ravi Kumar Saxena along with 51 others.

Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati represented the state of Uttar Pradesh. The Supreme Court, while setting aside the selection lists issued by the Uttar Pradesh authorities in June 2020 and January 2022, which included 6,800 candidates, also instructed the respective counsels to submit brief written notes not exceeding seven pages pertaining to the matter and listed the same for September 23.

Notably, on August 20, the Allahabad High Court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to prepare a fresh selection list for the recruitment of 69,000 assistant teachers across the state.

"If a reserved category candidate acquires merit equivalent to the merit prescribed for the general category, then a meritorious reserved category candidate shall be migrated to the general category as per the provisions contained in Section 3(6) of the Reservation Act, 1994," the bench of Justices AR Masoodi and Brijraj Singh had noted.

Additionally, the court asserted that the benefits of vertical reservation should also be extended to horizontal reservation categories.

The bench comprising Justice AR Masoodi and Justice Brijraj Singh also instructed the state authorities to finalize the new selection list within a three-month period.

However, to prevent any disruption to students' education, court allowed currently employed assistant teachers to complete the ongoing academic session.

The judgment came in 90 special appeals filed by Mahendra Pal and others, who had challenged a single-judge's judgment from March 13 of the previous year.

The appellants had argued that the reservation system used in the selection process of 69,000 teachers was flawed and questioned the legitimacy of the appointments of the 6,800 reserved category teachers. Though the single judge bench had decided to cancel the selection list from January 5, 2022, for 6,800 reserved category teachers, it had ruled that candidates benefiting from reservations in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) should not be considered for the unreserved category, even if they achieved the general category cut-off marks.

The division bench upheld the single-judge's decision to cancel the selection list from January 5, 2022, but it held that reserved category candidates who obtain merit equal to general candidates should be migrated to the general category if they meet the merit criteria.

It also clarified that "the rule of migration would only come into play on the determination of overall merit of a candidate at the end of the selection process and not at any early stage".

The ATRE was held on January 5, 2019. The results were declared on May 12, 2020, where 1.46 lakh candidates had qualified. On June 1, 2020, the Secretary of the Basic Education Board, Allahabad, delineated the recruitment process. In October 2020, lists of 67,867 selected candidates were published. The remaining 1,133 posts for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates were shown as lying vacant due to the non-availability of candidates from the category.

The selection lists were challenged in the high court, with allegations that candidates from the unreserved category accounted for more than 50% of those selected, depriving reserved category candidates of their rightful representation. The challengers argued that OBC candidates received only 3.86% reservation, far below the mandated 27%, and SC candidates were allocated 16.2% of the posts instead of the required 21%.