New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday sought response from the Centre and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) on a plea seeking 10 per cent reservation for the economically weaker sections in unreserved categories in 2019 Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) .
The court has also sought response from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) that conducts the CTET.
The vacation bench of Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Sanjiv Khanna sought response from the Centre and the NCTE while not acceding to petitioners’ plea for direction to the Centre and NCET to provide for 10 per cent reservations for the EWS in the 2019 CTET in conformity with the constitutional provision.
“This is only an eligibility test,” Justice Banerjee observed as lawyer Pushkar Sharma, appearing for the petitioners, told the court that there was provision for SC/ST and the OBCs reservation and they would get 5 per cent relaxation of marks in the test, where the total paper is of 150 marks.
Another lawyer Prashant Shukla said that a candidate appearing in CTET becomes eligible if he scores 90 marks out of 150 total marks and the candidates enjoying reservation would become eligible if they score 82.5 marks. The Constitution’s 103rd amendment providing for 10 per cent reservation to EWS is an enabling provision and it had to be followed by notifications extending the provision in specific cases, the bench said as two lawyers pointed to the constitution’s amendment extending 10 per cent reservations to EWS.
The bench said that that there was distinction between an enabling provision and a mandatory provision of the Constitution as lawyers urged the court to step in and direct the Centre and the NCET to extend 10 per cent EWS reservation to 2019 CTET. The court fixed July 2 as the next date of hearing.
