Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said the 36,000-odd teachers in government-aided primary schools who stand to lose their jobs because the high court thinks they are untrained are actually trained personnel.
“We have decided to move an appeal against the order of scrapping jobs. Someone claimed that these candidates did not have training. This is not correct. They have been trained. There was an order from Delhi. The order was that if a candidate was recruited, he or she would have to undergo a one-year training within three years,” the chief minister said at Nabanna.
She said this hours after the primary education board moved a division bench of the high court, headed by Justice Subrata Talukdar, for permission to appeal against an order of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the court cancelling the jobs of the 36,000-odd teachers.
The bench allowed the board to move the appeal.
“Each of them has taken training. There are so many other points. I do not want to say now as the case is going to be heard. But I would appeal to the 36,000 teachers and their family members not to suffer from depression. The state government will try to help you in a legal way as much as possible.”
Justice Gangopadhyay of the high court had on Friday cancelled the recruitment of the teachers on the grounds that they did not have a diploma in elementary education.
An official of the education department said that since Justice Gangopadhyay’s order was premised on the grounds that the candidates were untrained at the time of recruitment, the chief minister sought to clear the air on the issue.
The Telegraph reported on Saturday that the primary board had recruited these teachers in 2016 after the then Union human resource development minister, Smriti Irani, relaxed the norm in April 2015.
The relaxation came after the chief minister informed the Union minister about acute shortage of teachers and lack of enough trained candidates.
On April 7, 2015, Irani had written to Mamata that the relaxation was available till 2016, provided the recruits were trained by 2019.
The chief minister said the families of the teachers who stand to lose their jobs following the court order were calling her up and requesting her to save them. “So we have decided to move an appeal,” she said.
The chief minister had on March 14 appealed to the judiciary not to take away jobs. Instead, she said, the judiciary should think of ways to return jobs to those whose services have been terminated.
The services of thousands of employees in government-aided upper primary and secondary schools had been terminated because of irregularities in appointment.
