Karnataka HC allows state government to appoint 13,352 teachers

The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday allowed the state government to appoint 13,352 teachers for class 6 to 8 whose names were announced in a list on March 8, 2023.

However, among these, candidates who were selected based on the orders of a single-judge bench on January 30, 2023 will be deferred till their challenge to the selection process is decided by the Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal (KSAT), it said.

The process to appoint 15,000 teachers began with a notification by the Deputy Director of Public Instructions (DDPI) in February 2022. The authorities have announced the provisional 1:1 list on November 18, 2022.

Hundreds of Other Backward Caste (OBC) married female candidates had approached the single judge stating that they had been marked as General Merit candidates because they had provided the income and caste certificates of their fathers instead of their husbands. The state insisted the rules permitted only certificates of the husbands of married women candidates to be considered.

The single judge had, however, ordered that the income and caste certificates of the husbands of these candidates should be considered.

The candidates who did not find themselves in the new list of 13,352 selected candidates filed appeals before the Division Bench.

The Division Bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice MGS Kamal, however, in their judgement on Thursday, said that the single-judge bench did not have the jurisdiction to hear the petitions in the first place. The authorities have now prepared the list based on the single-judge order. However, ”considering the imminent requirement of the Graduate Primary School Teachers and large vacancies across the state and in the interest of the students of 6 to 8 standards who are left high and dry for want of teachers, we are of the considered view that the respondent-state be permitted to proceed with appointing teachers from 13,352 selected candidates as per the list dated 08.03.2023,” the bench said.

But the appointment of the candidates ”who have not submitted the caste-cum-income certificate in the form prescribed in the notification and which is not in terms of Government Order and who are included in the list in view of the order passed by a learned Single Judge should be deferred until the outcome of the result of the challenge,” it said. The single-judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna had set aside the earlier list published on November 18, 2022.

In the new list published on March 8, 2023, 451 candidates who were selected earlier were left out. As regards to these candidates, the division bench said that ”it is clarified that if, in the event, the eligibility of such candidates who have not furnished the caste-cum-income certificate in the prescribed form is held to be invalid, such posts may be filled from amongst the candidates who have been excluded on merits and the candidates who have submitted certificates in the prescribed form.”