HC vacates stay on appointment of 9,455 Haryana teachers

In a major relief to 9,455 junior basic training (JBT) teachers selected by the previous Congress government in Haryana, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday vacated the stay on their appointment.

Justice Ritu Bahri vacated the stay after the Central Forensic Science Laboratory did not find any tampering with the results during the selection process.

The high court had in August last asked the state to complete the verification process within 10 weeks to facilitate their appointment.

Staying the process for their removal till the appointment of regular JBT teachers, the court had directed the Haryana government to speed up the process of technical verification of the already selected candidates and complete it within 10 weeks so that they could be issued appointment letters.

The selection was done by the Haryana School Teachers Selection Board in August 2014 when Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the chief minister.

The board was disbanded by the BJP government and the entire record pertaining to the selection was handed over to the Haryana Staff Selection Commission.

The petitioner-JBT teachers contended that they were not awarded two marks for post-graduation qualification in the initial results declared on September 6, 2014.

Later, the result was revised on their representations and they were given the benefit of two marks for post-graduation. But at the same time, two marks were reduced from their interview score declared earlier.