School and mass education department commissioner-cum secretary Aparajita Sarangi. Telegraph picture

Cuttack, Jan. 19: Orissa High Court today dropped contempt proceeding initiated against school and mass education department commissioner-cum-secretary, Aparajita Sarangi, in connection with promotions given to 400-odd non-government primary school teachers who were declared government employees.

The contempt proceeding was initiated on January 5 as the promotions were given without seeking permission of the high court before which dispute related to their declaration as government servants was under adjudication.

Sarangi had appeared before the court in person on that day and filed a show-cause affidavit seeking “unconditional and unqualified apology”. She had urged the court to drop the proposed contempt proceeding as per show-cause notice issued on December 12, 2010.

However, the court had rejected the show-cause affidavit and initiated the contempt proceedings while fixing January 19 as the day for the final order. “But the two-judge bench of Justices B.P. Das and Sanju Panda dropped the contempt proceeding against school and mass education department commissioner-cum-secretary Aparajita Sarangi after a fresh show-cause affidavit was filed by her stating that all the promotions from Level V to IV and from Level IV to III given during pendency of the case related to it have been recalled,” school and mass education department counsel Bibhu Prasad Tripathy told The Telegraph today.

“The bench further fixed January 25 for final hearing in the case pending before it,” Tripathy said. The outcome of the case assumes significance as its early disposal was imperative as vacant positions all over the state in level IV and III was 11,110 and 7,143 respectively. Besides, the Central government had issued guidelines to fill up all posts, including promotional posts, in view of the enactment of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act.”

As evident, the case pending before the high court centred around a dispute over the gradation list that had given en masse seniority to non-government primary school teachers. A resolution passed by the education and youth services department on September 26, 1989, had declared them as government servants over teachers of aided non-government Uupper primary schools. AOLSTA had challenged the gradation list in the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT). The tribunal had on April 27, 2010, ruled that “assistant teachers of non-government primary schools deemed government servants from September 5, 1989, cannot be covered under the Orissa Elementary Education (Method of Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Teachers and Officers), Rules, 1997, as their schools were not specifically declared as government schools at any given point of time”.

The tribunal had then directed the state government to fix seniority of teachers as per resolution of education department on May 12, 1992, on the basis of which aided non-government U.P. schools were taken over. But petitions challenging the SAT order were filed in the high court. The state government had also filed one petition.

The high court, in one of the petitions, had on May 20, 2010, issued an interim order, which said: “In the meantime, the order dated 27.4.2010 passed by the State Administrative Tribunal along with a batch of cases shall not be given effect to without leave of this court”.