Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court on Thursday asked the West Bengal Primary Education Board to include candidates who had scored 82 or more out of 150 in the 2014 and 2017 Teachers’ Eligibility Tests in the interview process.
The order came after advocate Shamim Ahmed told the court that according to the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) rules, 82 should be the pass mark in TET.
The board had earlier fixed 83 as the cut-off.
The state government has announced that 11,700-odd candidates would be appointed as teachers in primary schools. The process for registering for the interview has started.
Soon after the court reopened after the puja vacation on October 31, a number of petitions were filed over the academic qualifications fixed by the board for the candidates to be called for the interview.
The primary education board had announced that candidates with at least 50 per cent marks in the Bachelor of Education (BEd) exam and at least 45 per cent marks in other exams would qualify for the selection process.
The petitions moved before Calcutta High Court have challenged the legality of the board’s decision.
While hearing the petitions on Thursday, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay wanted to know about the NCTE rule in this regard and wanted an NCTE representative to appear before his court virtually.
On Thursday, no NCTE representative was available.
In another development, Sunil Bhattacharya, said to be a resident of Naktala, suddenly stood up in Justice Gangopadhyay’s court while he was about to leave and said: “I am a neighbour of former education minister (Partha Chatterjee). Everyone in the locality was aware about the activities of the minister. But we never uttered a word. We are grateful to you.”