Patna, Nov. 16: The high court today directed the government to furnish details of teachers’ posts vacant in the state.

The court also sought to know from the state the total number of applicants willing to take Bihar Elementary Teachers Eligibility Test (BETET).

A bench of Justice Ramesh Kumar Datta passed the direction on a petition filed by Nuzhat Iqbal seeking direction to the government not to conduct BETET.

The government is conducting BETET to recruit around three lakh teachers in the next three years in government schools. The bench pulled up the state government for not filing its affidavit annexing the letter through which it sought relaxation of norms from the Centre. It also asked the state to explain details such as total number of vacancies of school teachers and the number of applicants, including the trained and untrained aspirants, in an affidavit.

The court directed the government to give the data on affidavit on which it relied for seeking relaxation in norms from the Centre.

The Centre’s counsel, S.N. Pathak, submitted that the central government gave the relaxation in the minimum qualifications as laid down by National Council for Technical Education (NCTE) to become teacher after a request from the state government to the Centre to consider the case as a special one.

The state government had on March 1, 2011 submitted a proposal to the Centre saying that “Bihar does not have adequate institutions offering courses or training in teacher education or teachers possessing minimum qualification as laid down by NCTE are not available in sufficient numbers in relation to the demand for teachers in classes I to VIII,” Pathak contended.

According to NCTE rules, a person must be trained — DEd or BEd — for appearing in the BETET. The affidavit added that untrained persons are not eligible to appear for BETET.

Explaining that the Centre can relax the norms in special cases under sub-section 2 of Section 23 of RTE Act, Pathak said: “After examining the proposal of the Bihar government that it does not have adequate institutions to offer courses or training in teacher education or it does not possess trained persons for the recruitment of teachers, (the) Central government granted relaxation through a gazette notification on June 10, 2011, in the minimum qualifications as laid down by the NCTE.”

The petitioners, who requested the court to quash the state government’s press communiqué dated May 20, 2011, inviting applications for the BETET, submitted that the press communiqué has allowed untrained persons to appear in the BETET, which is in violation of the minimum teacher qualifications as fixed by the NCTE. They contended that the advertisement is illegal on the ground that the state does not have power to relax the NCTE’s qualifications.

The petitioners submitted that besides NCTE’s norms, the Supreme Court also ruled that only trained personnel (BEd or any other training) can be appointed as teachers and hence the government should first fill up the vacancies with trained persons.