Rajasthan HC vacates stay on TET 2011

Rajasthan High Court has vacated stay ordered given by a single bench, over holding of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET-2011) and asked the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) to declare new dates for the test. With this, the court has disposed off all the writ petitions pertaining to the RTET. With this the legality of this test, which also was challenged in different writ petitions, has been established. A bench, comprising chief justice Arun Kumar Mishra and justice Kailash Chandra Joshi, had been hearing the arguments continuously for the past four days clubbing all the writ petitions filed to challenge the RTET. The criteria pertaining to the eligibility of commerce graduates and minimum marks for the appearance in the RTET were dropped on Thursday considering the revision on these two aspects by the state government and the hearing proceeded on other issues.

Counsel of the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE), Kuldeep Mathur said the court on Friday disposed off all the writ petitions and vacated the stay on RTET. “Now, according to fresh orders of the court, there will not be any minimum marks criteria for those graduates from arts, commerce and science streams, who have completed their B Ed before 2007. For the students, who have done their B Ed between 2007 and 2009 and secured at least 45% marks as general candidates, will be eligible to appear for the RTET. But students who passed the exam after 2009 will require to have at least 50% marks as general candidates to appear in the RTET,” Mathur said. Besides, pointing out that J&K is an integral part of India, the court also ordered the government to allow candidates from the state to appear for the RTET. However, it refused to permit Bachelors in computer application (BCA) and management (BBA) to appear in the test citing the reason that these are subjects not taught at the primary level.