GUWAHATI:
In compliance with the Gauhati High Court order rejecting the grace mark system in Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) results, the Assam government has halted appointment of TET qualified teachers with grace marks until further orders.
Additionally, the Director of Secondary Education (DoSE) also withheld the results of the candidates who had passed the TET exams with grace marks, till the final judgement of the order.
Earlier on May 15, a single bench judge of the High Court comprising Justice Kalyan Rai Surana, after hearing petitions filed by TET qualified candidates, in an order had said that passing TET with grace marks was illegal.
A writ petition filed before the court by the TET qualified candidates without grace marks demanded that they must be given preference over candidates who qualified with grace marks.
“The award of grace to the extent of five marks in either Part-I or Part-II to candidates who had qualified in either of the two parts but failed in one, is held to be illegal. The respondent authorities would do the needful to recall such grace marks within a period of two months from the service of a certified copy of this order,” the court said in its order.
Uncertainty looms large over the jobs of more than seven thousand secondary TET teachers in the state following the order, and there is uncertainty over the jobs of many candidates who have been working in various schools after passing the secondary TET with grace marks.
It is believed there were some TET qualified candidates with grace marks among 2,221 candidates who were appointed by the DoSE on May 11 as part of the state government’s one lakh job for the state’s youth.
Meanwhile, the list of 1,381 TET qualified candidates will also be declared till the final judgement of the order by the High Court. The results of secondary TET were announced on March 4, 2020, in which 7,417 have been declared as TET qualified.
Later, an additional 4,615 candidates have also been declared as TET qualified by giving five grace marks. With this, the total number of secondary TET qualified candidates has gone up to 11,322.
In addition to this, more than 710 candidates have been declared TET qualified to grant one more grace mark to each owing to the error in answer scripts following which the total number of secondary TET qualified candidates has further gone up to 12,032.
Of them, the recruitment process was one for 5,746 secondary TET teachers, official sources said.
“However, the award of grace marks of 1 (one) grace mark in respect of two questions (jumbled in four alphabetical series), viz., (i) Q. No. 74 in P-series; Q. No. 83 in Q-series; Q. No. 91 in R-series; and Q. No. 52 in S-series; and (ii) Q. No. 194 in P-series; Q. No. 198 in Q-series; Q. No. 177 in R-series; and Q. No. 184 in S-series, is held to be fully justified and saved because the resource University has admitted error in answer to those two questions,” the court said in its order.
“In respect of the second set of writ petitions, i.e. W.P.(C) 3882/2020, (i) the petitioners in the unreserved category, who had otherwise scored a minimum 60%, and (ii) petitioners in the reserved category, who had otherwise scored minimum 55% in the aggregate and may not have scored 60%/55% in any one of two parts, are entitled to be declared as TET qualified, which would be in consonance with Rule 10(2) of the 2018 Rules read with Clause-9 of the NCTE Guidelines. Resultantly, the authorities are directed to do the exercise of revisiting the mark-sheets of all the candidates whose name/ roll number did not appear in the TET results declared on 04.03.2020, and if any candidates are found to have otherwise scored the minimum percentile marks of 60% and/or 55% (for unreserved/reserved category), all of such candidates be declared to be TET qualified in respect of examinations held on 19.01.2020, pursuant to educational advertisement dated 13.09.2019. The said exercise shall be carried out within the outer period of two months from the date of service of a certified copy of this order in the office of the Director of Secondary Education, Assam,” the court added.