RAJKUMAR LAXMAN GIRI Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) There is an Affidavit in Reply on behalf of Respondent Nos. 3 and 4 in Writ Petition No. 2622 of 2023. Corresponding Affidavits are to be filed in the companion Petitions.

(2.) We have heard Mr Pakale and Ms Kulkarni on behalf of the Petitioners and Mrs Purav for the State Government briefly. We believe that the officers of the State Government need to make a more detailed report to the Court and put this on Affidavit. These Petitions cannot be disposed of in generalities. Some of these teachers, as Mr Pakale points out, have been working since 1995. As Ms Kulkarni had indicated on the very first date, these teachers are now being accused of being over-qualified, meaning that they possess graduate degrees and either a B. Ed or D. Ed but are yet teaching what is called the upper or senior primary, i.e., 6th to 8th standards. Now the Affidavit in Reply seems to indicate that as many as 75% of these persons will be discontinued from service and some others, but with far lower qualifications, will be employed in their place. That has been the complaint from day one and seems prima facie to be borne out by this Affidavit in Reply.

(3.) If on the other hand the submission is that the employment of the Petitioners is unaffected by the GRs in question and by what is said to be in the Affidavit "a conversion in a new form of transition to the Act of 2009" meaning the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, then, it simply cannot be that in the so-called 'transition' process serving primary teachers with graduate degrees and a B. Ed/D. Ed will be displaced by persons who have lesser qualifications.