Soon, Education dept to create tribunal

The state Education department is all set to create a tribunal to fast track the process of several litigations related to recruitment of teachers, problems related to admission and others. According to sources in the Education department, as many as 72,000 cases are pending before the High Court that is often acting as barriers to the recruitment process undertaken by the department.

"We have decided on principle that an education tribunal needs to be created," Education minister Partha Chatterjee said.

A top official of the Education department said that a notification in this regard will be issued soon after the approval of the Calcutta High Court.

In recent times, there have been a number of cases challenging the examination of recruitment in primary, upper primary and even in the high school level.

"There have been a number of cases when we are completely in the dark about the grievances of an examinee or a teacher. It is only after the person goes to the court we are informed of the matter. This information gap needs to be sorted out," a senior official said.

Once a tribunal is formed, aggrieved people would have to first approach the tribunal." If he/she is dissatisfied with the verdict of the tribunal, then he may go to the higher forum," the official added.

When former Bengal Advocate General Jayanta Mitra resigned in February, some lawyers had said that Mitra's differences with the government were related to cases on Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) at the primary level.