Headmasters demand fair share in promotions

The Punjab Headmasters Association has urged the School Education Department to grant them their fair share in promotions for the post of principal by including the backlog quota that has been overlooked for years.

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Association president Kulwinder Kataria and general secretary Jaswinder Singh Bhullar stated that, as per rules and court rulings, any unfulfilled quota in promotions for a cadre cannot be cancelled. They highlighted that the department itself admitted in the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018 that by 2014, 260 extra lecturers were promoted as principals beyond their quota. Since then, nearly 1,500 more lecturers have been promoted, while headmasters have received hardly any promotions.

Currently, the department reportedly plans to calculate promotion quotas based on how many current principals come from the lecturer and headmaster cadres. The Association argues that this approach is unfair and contradicts Supreme Court guidelines, which mandate that backlog must be calculated based on past promotion records—not on who is currently serving.

They demanded that the backlog for headmasters be calculated from 1986 to 1996, with promotions made accordingly from 1996 to 2022.