Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Nov 17: Division Bench of State High Court comprising Chief Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar and Justice Tashi Rabstan today held that ReT teachers can be transferred from one school to another.
This significant judgment has been passed in a bunch of LPAs in which petitioners submitted that they were initially engaged as Rehbar-e-Taleem teachers and on completion of five years of service they were regularized as General Line Teachers.
Once they became General Line Teachers, the statue, namely, the Jammu and Kashmir School Education Subordinate Services Rules, is applicable to them and they are entitled to be treated at par with other permanent Government teachers and their service conditions are to be regulated by the J&K Civil Service (Classification, control and appeal) Rules, 1956.
As per Rule 27 of these Rules an employee including a teacher serving in the Education Department, is required to be transferred from one place to another on the post and cadre on which he is borne in and there cannot be any separate Rule providing separate provision for transfer of teachers on the basis of their birthmark/entry into service. As per the Jammu and Kashmir Education Subordinate Service Rules, a teacher is entitled to be transferred anywhere in the district against the post of a teacher.
After hearing battery of lawyers, DB observed, “it is evident that respondents cannot treat the appellants/petitioners, who were regularized as General Line Teachers on their satisfactory completion of 5 years service as Rehbar-e-Taleem, differently. Thus, circulars/transfer orders stating that the petitioners are repatriated to the schools where they served as Rehbar-e-Taleem is erroneous and unsustainable”.
Insofar as the contention of the Advocate General that the petitioners were transferred to schools where there was no teacher, for administrative exigency taking note of the interests of the students, the DB said, “even assuming that they are not to be repatriated, the orders can be treated as orders of transfer simpliciter for which the respondents-Chief Education Officers are empowered as per Rules, has got substance”, adding “admittedly, on regularization, the appellants/writ petitioners have become teachers in the cadre and they are subject to transfer within the district in terms of Rule 27 of the Jammu & Kashmir (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1956 or any transfer policy”.
“Thus, they cannot oppose their transfer within the district. The senior counsel and other counsels appearing for the appellants/petitioners fairly submitted that if the impugned orders are treated as transfer orders simpliciter without repatriation, the appellants/petitioners are willing to serve the schools like other teachers, who are appointed directly as they are eligible to be transferred to other schools after completing their normal tenure of service”, the DB said, adding “the counsels appearing for the petitioners argued that the schools where the appellants/ writ petitioners have been repatriated/ transferred are closed now due to want of students, as such they cannot be asked to serve in a school where there is no student”.
The Advocate General replied to the submission that the students in some of the schools were adjusted in nearby schools for want of teachers and the department will sent back the students to the earlier schools so as to enable the teachers now posted in such schools to serve.
Upon this, DB was of the view that such of the writ petitioners who have been transferred to the schools where there is no student available and if students were admitted in nearby schools are not sent to the schools, where the appellants/writ petitioners are transferred and posted, it is open for such of those writ petitioners to make a representation before the Chief Education Officer concerned to post them in any other school and if any such representation is submitted, the same shall be considered by the concerned Chief Education Officer within a period of two weeks from the date of receipt of such representation.
DB made it clear that if the schools where some of the appellants/petitioners are transferred and posted are not having any student, due to which they could not join, such of those teachers shall be paid salary for the entire period till they are accommodated in other schools or provision is made to serve in those schools by sending back the students.
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