Reserved-category candidates, who have scored 82 and above in the 2014 and 2017 Teachers’ Eligibility Tests (TET), can appear in interviews for recruitment, a Calcutta High Court judge ruled on Wednesday.
On June 28, two judges of a division bench of the court had differed while fixing
the eligibility marks for the reserved-category candidates who had cleared the tests.
The eligibility marks enable the candidates to appear in the interview, the final hurdle before the recruitment.
The case was then sent to Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam so it could be assigned to a third judge.
On Wednesday, Justice Saugata Bhattacharya, who was assigned the responsibility of resolving the stalemate, put the cut-off score at 82.
Earlier, Justice Subrata Talukdar, the senior judge on the division bench, held that the eligibility marks for a reserved-category candidate should be 82.
Justice Supratim Bhattacharya, the other judge of the division bench, said the cut-off should be 82.5.
According to the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE), 60 per cent in TET would make general-category candidates eligible for the interview. It is 55 per cent in the case of reserved-category candidates.
The teaching job aspirants for government-aided primary schools were tested on questions carrying 150 marks in TET 2014 and 2017.
A candidate in the general category had to score 90 out of 150, which is 60 per cent, to make the cut.
For the reserved category, 55 per cent of 150 works out to 82.5.
The calculation had prompted the board to consider the round figure of 83 before November last year, sources in the state primary education board said.
In November 2022, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay brought down the cut-off for the reserved category candidates to 82.
Some of the candidates had then moved the division bench against the 82-mark cut-off.
In his order on Wednesday, Justice Saugata Bhattacharya declined to interfere with the verdict given by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay in November 2022.
“This court is not interfering with the ruling by the single-bench judge (Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay),” Justice Saugata Bhattacharya said in court.
Advocate Firdaus Shamim, who appeared for the petitioners (who scored more than 82 but less than 83) of the original case, said after Wednesday’s verdict: “Now, the appellants (who had challenged Justice Gangopadhyay’s order before the division bench) are left with only one option, to move the Supreme Court.”
Around 1.2 lakh candidates cleared the TET held in 2015 following a notification a year
before.
A total of 9,896 candidates qualified for TET in 2021 following a notification in 2017.
In the wake of the stalemate created by the difference in the division bench, officials of the state primary education board had said the back-and-forth in court had been delaying the recruitment process.
Asked for a response after the new ruling on Wednesday, board president Goutam Paul said they were yet to go through the text of the order.