Guest teachers' case: Sisodia appears in HC

NEW DELHI: Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday appeared before the Delhi High Court in related with guest teachers' regularisation case. Earlier, the court had asked both Delhi L-G and elected Government to take a decision on the issue.

"I personally appeared before the Hon'ble High Court in the matter of Guest Teachers, to protect the process of Education reform we have been carrying out. Guest teachers have played an important role in transforming government schools and their removal will hurt our schools," he added.

The bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Deep Sharma asked as to why the Government wanted to regulate the guest teachers by ignoring the rules. The bench said that if the guest teachers were qualified, they will sit in the recruitment examination and if they qualify they will retain their position. Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolio, allaged the decision on the issue was taken unilaterally without consulting the government.

The Delhi Assembly had passed the Regularisation of Services of Guest Teachers and Teachers Engaged Under the 'Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan' Bill, 2017. The Bill advocates to regularise 15,000 guest teachers.

The Education Minister said there were 50,000 guest teachers in Delhi, out of which 17,000 had passed the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET). And 15,000 of these teachers, who fulfilled all criteria, have been made permanent. The remaining 35,000 will be working on a rotation basis and will 'stand a chance' to be made permanent once they clear the eligibility test.