E.VALARMATHI Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Writ Petition is filed for a Mandamus directing the respondents to adopt normalization process for the marks secured by the candidates in TET Paper - II examination conducted by the second respondent pursuant to the Notification No.1 / 2022, dtd. 7/3/2022 and consequently, derive rational and standardized results.

(2.) The brief facts leading to filing of the Writ Petition are that the petitioners possess the educational qualifications of Higher Secondary and Two Year Diploma in Teaching and Education or such equivalent or higher qualifications. In order to qualify to be appointed as Teachers under the respondents, by virtue of the notification issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, originally vide G.O.(Standing) No.181, dtd. 15/11/2011 followed by the subsequent Government Orders, G.O. (Standing) No.149, dtd. 20/7/2018 being the latest, the petitioners have to secure a minimum of 60% in the Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the respondents.

(3.) By a notification, dtd. 7/3/2022, applications were called for in respect of the said test and all the petitioners applied and undertook the test. The test was conducted between 3/2/2023 to 15/2/2023 in all totaling to 23 sessions. The respondents have set different question papers for different sessions and as such, the difficulty level was different. For example, when the fourth petitioner, P.Banupriya, wrote on 10/2/2023 forenoon, out of 11,562 candidates appearing along with her, only 231 candidates qualified constituting only 2% of the candidates who wrote the examination. Whereas, in a session on 7/2/2023 forenoon, while 10,105 candidates undertook the examination, 1,398 candidates qualified constituting about 12.15% of the candidates. Thus, it can be seen that the difficulty level in respect of various sessions varies and therefore, in such situations, the respondents ought to have followed the normalization process.