Notification for Recruitment of 12,489 Teachers in Chhattisgarh Quashed; Relief for Currently Employed Teachers

The Chhattisgarh High Court has quashed the advertisement and the associated reservation roster for the recruitment of 12,489 teachers. A single-judge bench presided over by Justice A.K. Prasad delivered this verdict after accepting the arguments presented by the petitioners.

The Chhattisgarh High Court has set aside the advertisement and the reservation roster for the recruitment of 12,489 teachers, initiated in the state in 2023. Justice A.K. Prasad’s single-judge bench issued this significant ruling after upholding the petitioners' contentions. However, the court has provided relief by clarifying that this decision does not entirely nullify the recruitment process, and teachers currently in service will not be removed from their positions with immediate effect. The appointments and future promotions of these teachers will remain subject to the final outcome of a case currently pending before the Supreme Court. The matter pertains to an advertisement issued on May 4, 2023, by the Chhattisgarh Professional Examination Board (Vyapam) for the recruitment of 12,489 posts, including those for assistant teachers and lecturers.

Candidates who qualified in the written examination had challenged the validity of the category-wise allocation of posts and the reservation roster determined by the Professional Examination Board. The petition stated that the recruitment advertisement reserved more than 60 percent of the posts for the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category—a proportion exceeding the prescribed limit. According to the data, 698 out of 1,113 posts in the 'E' (Education) cadre were reserved for the ST category, accounting for approximately 67.71 percent of the total. Similarly, in the 'T' (Tribal) cadre, 3,105 out of 4,659 teacher posts were reserved for the ST category, representing approximately 66.64 percent of the total. The petitioners argue that allocating more than 60 percent reservation to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category significantly reduced opportunities for candidates from the General, Scheduled Caste (SC), and Other Backward Class (OBC) categories, which they contend is unconstitutional.

New advertisement issued based on the 2012 policy

On November 29, 2012, the Chhattisgarh government issued a notification increasing the total reservation from 50 percent to 58 percent—allocating 12 percent to SC, 32 percent to ST, and 14 percent to OBC categories. On September 19, 2022, a division bench of the High Court declared this 58 percent reservation notification, along with the 'model roster' formulated under it, unconstitutional and struck it down. Despite this, on May 4, 2023, the state government issued a new recruitment advertisement based on this same, already-invalidated policy and roster.

Misuse of the Supreme Court's order

Following the division bench's decision to strike down the reservation policy, the state government approached the Supreme Court. During a hearing on May 1, 2023, the Supreme Court granted permission only to complete recruitment and promotion processes that had been pending prior to the 2022 High Court ruling. Senior counsel for the petitioners clarified in court that the advertisement issued on May 4, 2023, was an entirely new advertisement, released after the Supreme Court's order. The Supreme Court had only permitted the completion of existing, ongoing processes—not the initiation of entirely new processes under the 2012 policy, which had already been declared unconstitutional.

Government's argument regarding the posts rejected

The state government had argued that out of a total of 12,489 posts, approximately 3,740 were 'backlog' posts, while 8,743 were new posts—a factor they claimed accounted for the higher percentage allocated to the ST category. However, the court observed that the government failed to produce concrete statutory documents and roster records pertaining to the backlog.