Orissa HC Reserves Order On Appointment Of Junior Teachers, Allows Stay To Continue

Cuttack: The Orissa High Court on Wednesday reserved its order on the case of irregularities in recruitment of junior teachers even as allowed the interim stay on the process to continue.

The court reserved the order after the final hearing on the case from both parties. The petitioner had challenged the process of final selection of candidates by the Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) for appointment to the posts of junior teachers in primary and upper primary schools in the state.

Speaking to media after the hearing, petitioners’ lawyer Sammer Kumar Das said both parties put forth their arguments on what basis the appointment was being made – whether districtwise or statewise. “We produced document substantiating our allegation of loopholes in the OSEPA’s argument,” he said.

Notably, a notification was issued on October 23, 2023, for the recruitment of around 20,000 junior teachers in Odisha. Later, some candidates moved the High Court alleging irregularities in the recruitment process. Following an initial hearing on the petition on January 19, the Court had asked the Odisha government to put on hold the final selection process and appointment of Junior Teachers till the next hearing.

On January 24, the High Court had asked the state government to put the recruitment of junior teachers on hold till January 30.

It may be noted here that OSEPA had published the draft merit list of 18,805 candidates and fixed January 20 and 21 for verification of documents. Following this, a large number of aspirants had alleged that the merit list published by OSEPA was done without announcing the cut-off mark. They also alleged that there were several anomalies in the issue of admit cards some of which had fake names and photos on them.

Also Read: HC Puts Recruitment Of Odisha Junior Teachers On Hold Till Jan 30