Severe crunch of teachers, yet many staff on court duty

While the Delhi-government-run schools are facing a severe crunch of trained teachers, as many as 176 te-aching staff, including principals, vice-principals, post-graduate teachers (PGT) and training graduate tea-chers (TGT) have been han-ding legal matters in the city courts for the past several years. As many as 25 principals deployed to handle court works for the past 15-odd years have reportedly been redesignated as the deputy education officers.

There are indications that the administration may go in for fresh recruitments of teachers to replace the ones handling court matters to handle the severe crunch of teachers in the government schools. There is also a strong view in the government that the teachers handling legal matters should be absorbed on the posts they had been handling for the past several years.

A source said that 13 principals/ vice-principals have been deployed across the district courts as officers on special duty (OSD). These OSDs are reportedly being assisted by 94 PGTs and TGTs. There are about 100-odd teaching staff handling works related to vigilance, modified assured career programme, personnel, administration and right to information.

As many as 29 PGTs and TGTs, working as legal assistants, are handling litigations in various courts in 29 zones. Additionally, two vice-principals are working in these 29 zones as legal assistants.

It is learnt that at least two PGTs and 20 TGTs (all LLBs) assigned to court related works for the last three years have reportedly been assured that they would be redesignated as law officers. “After realising that they have been cheated, all the PGTs and TGTs now want to go back to their respective schools,” a senior officer told this newspaper.

At present, there are about 26,031 teaching related posts lying vacant in the Delhi government and the BJP-led MCD-run schools across the city. The said figure does not include 9,000 new posts which have recently been created by the Delhi government.

In a letter to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the All-India Parents’ Association has claimed that posts of principals were lying vacant in 80 per cent of the Delhi government school.