HC issues notice to Haryana on plea seeking review of order on guest teachers

At the onset, the counsel for the applicants argued that the policy dated September 18, 2006, demonstrated the true nature and object of the engagement of guest faculty teachers. It established that such engagement was intended only to meet emergent academic requirements until regular recruitment was undertaken and “was never conceived as a regular source of recruitment or as conferring any right of continuance or regularisation”.

The applicants further submitted that “the entire line of binding precedents governing the controversy was deliberately withheld from this Court”. Referring to a previous judgment, they submitted that the state had pleaded that the guest faculty was engaged without any regular selection process through a limited zone of consideration and that permitting them to continue would eventually result in claims for regularisation at the cost of constitutionally eligible candidates.

The applicants further contended that the state’s subsequent executive attempts to perpetuate the continuance of guest teachers by granting adjustment, weightage, exemption from STET/HTET and age relaxation were “struck down by this Court” in “Ashok Kumar versus State of Haryana” on the ground that such concessions amounted to “an indirect method of regularising persons who had entered service through an irregular and noncompetitive process”.

It was added that the High Court’s view was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Mohinder Kumar versus State of Haryana, where it was “held that grant of weightage and exemption constituted an impermissible device to secure regularisation of Guest Teachers”.

The applicants also relied upon the Division Bench judgment in a public interest litigation seeking quashing of the state’s action in perpetuating the engagement of guest teachers and a direction to fill vacant teaching posts through the regular recruitment process in accordance with the constitutional scheme. The matter has been listed for September 9.