Teachers fight 22 yrs to get jobs

Selected in 1998 but failed to get appointment letters

Teachers who were selected in 1998 are still fighting to get their jobs for the last 22 years. They hope against hope that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy will resolve their issue before Teachers Day next week.

The then government in undivided AP had conducted a mega district selection committee (DSC) recruitment in 1998 for around 40,000 teacher vacancies. The results were out in 1999 and around 5,000 candidates were notified as qualified.

During the notification, the government had announced 50 marks as cut off for OC, 45 for BC and 40 for SC, ST and physically challenged candidates under GO No

221. Later, the qualifying marks were revised as 45,

40 and 35 respectively under GO No 618 in view of non-availability of candidates under the reservation quotas. The government has prescribed 85 marks for the written test and 15 marks for the interview.

According to 1998 DSC Sadhana Samiti president K. Srinivas, the revision of cut-off marks triggered litigation with the involvement of school education officers and certain politicians.

He said largescale irregularities took place in the selections in Nalgonda, Khammam, Karimnagar and Warangal districts and huge amounts of money changed hands, which resulted in merit candidates being shunted out.

Since the time the results were out in 1999, till date, 98 per cent of the candidates who were selected based on merit have not been appointed.

The merit candidates approached the then AP Administrative Tribunal which ruled in their favour on December 4,

2009. When the government did not act on the order, they moved the High Court.

A division bench of the High Court in November

2011 directed the government to give postings to the petitioners.

Last year, on Teachers Day, a single judge of the TS High Court slapped a jail sentence and fine on district educational officers of Khammam, Warangal, Karimnagar and Nalgonda for contempt of court, said Srinivas.

Despite this, the fate of the teachers has not changed due to the lethargic attitude of bureaucrats and politicians, Srinivas alleged.

Some of the candidates have died waiting for their jobs. The number of teachers asking for appointments is around 500 in TS,” Srinivas said.

S.K. Khasim, vice president of the DSC Sadhana Samithi, said, “We left no stone unturned. We submitted representations multiple times to N. Chandrababu Naidu, K. Chandrashekar Rao and Jagan Mohan Reddy. The then Chief Minister Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy had asked officials to sort out the matter. After his sudden death, the issue headed nowhere.

“In the 2014 Assembly elections, Chandrashekar Rao promised to resolve the issue. In 2016, he invited us to Pragathi Bhavan and had a discussion for over two-and-a-half hours, assuring us that he would resolve the problem.”

After the High Court slapped contempt punishment, the DEOs of Nalgonda and Karimnagar gave appointments to seven candidates.

P. Somashekar, president of USR 1998 DSC Teachers’ Association, said Jagan Mohan Reddy assured the candidates of resolving the problem during his padayatra before the elections.

There are around 2,000 candidates waiting for jobs in AP and many have crossed the age limit and some have died. During the Covid-19 crisis as many as 25 candidates died, Somashekar said.

He said there are no cases with regard to AP candidates. He said the then Telugu Desam government had constituted an MLCs committee on the matter but it clubbed the issue with DSC 2008 candidates which resulted in complicating the problem.

The MLC committee pointed out that 4,534 qualified candidates of DSC 1998 suffered losses due to the litigation, but it found only 36 candidates eligible for posting. After the survey, it found only six candidates eligible for posting,

"We have been facing severe losses with the carrying forward of the unfilled posts under all the categories by the state government,” said Somashekar. Srinivas and Somashekar demanded that both the Chief Ministers give them justice after their 22-year-old fight.