Over 500 sanctioned posts of special educators out of 588 are lying vacant in schools run by the civic agency in the national capital, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) informed Delhi High Court today.
"553 out of 588 posts of special educator, 181 out of 731 posts of Nursery Teacher and 802 out of 8244 posts of Primary Teacher are vacant," the SDMC said.
The corporation has disclosed this in an affidavit filed before Justice Manmohan, who was hearing a plea seeking contempt proceedings against the AAP government and municipal corporations for not complying with a court order to fill the vacancies for 26,000 teachers in their schools.
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The SDMC also stated that out of the total sanctioned strength of 588 principals for its primary schools, 126 are vacant for months and they have written to the authorities concerned.
The petition said there are "as many as 26,031 (this does not include 9,000 posts created by Delhi government in 2015) vacant posts of teachers" in the schools run by the Delhi government and the three corporations.
The plea, filed by NGO Social Jurist through its counsel Ashok Agarwal, has said there was "deliberate and intentional disobedience" of the orders of a division bench of the high court to ensure zero vacancy at the commencement of each academic year in schools in the national capital.
According to the Delhi government, 1,011 government schools currently have a total vacancy of around 15,000 teachers, which severely affects the teacher-student ratio.
Observing that despite a division bench direction of December 20, 2001 many vacancies still existed, the petition said this was "resulting in depriving 25,05,691 students studying in 1,977 schools of their fundamental right to receive quality education".
In 2001, on the NGO's plea against the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board, Delhi government and the municipal corporation, the high court had set a schedule for appointment of teachers to ensure that all posts are filled by beginning of July every year.
In 2010, on a contempt petition, the court had said the recruitment process was slow but appointment of teachers was taking place. It had said that if the state did not recruit teachers, the court can be approached again.
The NGO has now moved the contempt petition, saying the state and its agencies were "actually sitting over" the recruitment process.
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