Why were unemployed youngsters kneeling down at Telangana CM Revanth Reddy’s residence?

The teacher job aspirants had even prevented MLC-elect Chintapandu Naveen aka Teenmar Mallanna from entering the CM's house for some time.

Hyderabad: Over 200 teacher job aspirants went on an impromptu ‘kneel down’ protest in front of the Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy‘s residence here on Tuesday, after they were denied an opportunity to meet the CM.

The teacher job aspirants had even prevented MLC-elect Chintapandu Naveen aka Teenmar Mallanna from entering the CM’s house for some time. They let him go only after he promised to get their grievance redressed. Incidentally, this was the second time, they were making abortive attempt to meet and explain their issues to the Chief Minister in the last two months.

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But what was the issue that made the unemployed youth resort to the novel protest? The issue is slightly complicated but all they wanted was the implementation of an interim order by the Telangana High Court.

Let’s look at the issue now:

The Telangana Residential Educational Institutions Recruitment Board (TREI-RB) had in April 2023 issued a notification for recruitment to 8,708 vacancies which included Degree Lecturers (DL), Junior Lecturers (JL), Post Graduate Teacher (PGT), Trained Graduate Teachers (TGT) and Physical Director (PD) in the residential institutions.

The DL, JL and PGT vacancies recruitment had the same educational qualifications besides common papers in the written examination. With common papers and educational qualifications, several candidates got final selection for more than one post this time.

Here comes the issue, the authorities had not followed the “descending order” process while filling up the posts. Generally, the DL vacancies should be filled first, followed by JL, PGT and TGT posts. That means, if a candidate does not get selected for DL post, he can look forward to JL post followed by PGT and then subsequently TGT.

Instead of going for the DL recruitment first, followed by JL, PGT and TGT, authorities had for some inexplicable reason, first completed the PGT recruitment process.

The second complication is the process of “relinquishment option”. In this case, if a candidate got selected for DL, JL and PGT, he can exercise the relinquishment option where he can choose the DL post which is the best post out of DL, JL and PGT. In such a scenario, the JL and PGT posts which are relinquished by him will be allotted to the next meritorious candidate.

However, this time the board had released PGT selection first, followed by DL, JL and TGT posts without following the relinquishment option. Hence those who got selected for multiple posts would stand to lose if they happened to choose the PGT for which results were declared first.

Then there is another issue of the backlog list. A vacancy is notified as a backlog list if a candidate joins the job and resigns from it. These backlog vacancies are filled up only after issuing a fresh notification for recruitment. However, now the unemployed persons argue that there is no need to add posts in this backlog list and call for fresh notifications.

For example candidate A gets selected for posts of DL, JL and PGT. If he chose the post of DL, the other two posts of JL and PGT would be included in the backlog list. The unemployed persons, however, argue that in such a scenario, the vacancies of JL and PGT could be filled up with the next meritorious candidate, instead of going through the whole recruitment process again.

However, it is learnt that the recruitment board completed the process without giving an option for a waitlist of vacancies citing GO 81 issued in 1997, candidates allege.

Unhappy with the selection process, several candidates moved the High Court which directed the government to consider next meritorious candidates in instances of non-joining, fallout or relinquished posts of degree lecturers, junior lecturers, postgraduate teachers, trained graduate teachers, librarians and physical director posts in the residential educational institutions.

According to the job aspirants, a large number of the notified vacancies were vacant as the board did not provide a relinquishment option to candidates who got selected for more than one post.