Over 2000 teachers post vacant in MCD schools: HC told

Over 2,000 sanctioned posts of teachers, out of 6,023, are lying vacant in schools run by the civic agencies in the national capital, the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) informed Delhi High Court today.
"332 out of 365 posts of Special Educator, 125 out of 323 posts of Nursery Teacher and 1653 out of 5335 posts of Primary Teacher are vacant," the EDMC said.
The corporation has disclosed this in an affidavit filed before Justice Manmohan, who was hearing a plea seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against the AAP government and municipal corporations for not complying with a court order to fill up vacancies of over 26,000 teachers in their schools.

The EDMC also stated that in September last year, it has forwarded the requisition of teachers to SDMC.
The petition said there are "as many as 26,031 (this does not include 9,000 posts created by Delhi government in 2015) vacant posts of teachers" in the schools run by the Delhi government and the three corporations.
The plea, filed by NGO Social Jurist through its counsel Ashok Agarwal, has said there was "deliberate and intentional disobedience" of the orders of a division bench of the high court to ensure zero vacancy at the commencement of each academic year in schools in the national capital.

According to the Delhi government, 1,011 government schools currently have a total vacancy of around 15,000 teachers, which severely affects the teacher-student ratio.

Observing that despite a division bench direction of December 20, 2001, so many vacancies still existed, the petition said this was "resulting in depriving 25,05,691 students studying in 1977 schools of their fundamental right to receive quality education".
In 2001, on the NGO's plea against the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board, Delhi government and the municipal corporation, the high court had set a schedule for appointment of teachers to ensure that all posts are filled by beginning of July every year.

In 2010, on a contempt petition, the court had said the recruitment process was slow but appointment of teachers was taking place. It had said that if the state did not recruit teachers, the court can be approached again.
The NGO has now moved the contempt petition, saying the state and its agencies were "actually sitting over" the recruitment process.