A division bench of the Orissa High Court, on Tuesday, April 4, upheld that BCom degree holders cannot be disqualified for Trained Graduate Teacher (TGT) posts in secondary schools, on the grounds that they did not have English and Economics as subjects during their graduation. Earlier, a single-judge bench had ruled in favour of the BCom candidates applying for TGT posts.

Some such candidates had sought the court's intervention after their candidature was rejected for the TGT posts, even though they had Communicative English and Business Economics as subjects during graduation. Considering these petitions, a single-judge bench of the High Court had pronounced its order on May 6, 2022, as per a report by The New Indian Express.

"When across the state, the course of English is called Communicative English and Economics is called Business Economics in the BCom degree, then denying all BCom graduates the opportunity to be successful in being appointed as a trained graduate teacher using this hyper-technical approach is wholly arbitrary and amounts to an artificial discrimination which cannot hold in law," the order read.

However, the state government filed a writ appeal challenging the single judge's judgment. Dismissing this appeal on Tuesday, the division bench constituting Chief Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Gourishankar Satapathy, said, "The court is not satisfied that grounds have been made out for interference with the impugned order of the single judge."

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The bench also pointed out that a fresh advertisement for the recruitment of TGTs in various streams was issued by the state's School and Mass Education Department, in which the Communicative English and Business Economics subjects were added. This was after the single judge's order, when the state government's writ appeal was pending before the High Court.

The advertisement stated that candidates possessing Bachelor's degree with the said subjects would be provisionally allowed to participate in the TGT recruitment process, subject to the result of writ appeal. Taking note of this, the division bench said, "Denying the benefit to the candidates who have in fact succeeded before the single judge would be subjecting them to an unfair discrimination when the same benefit is allowed to candidates applying pursuant to the subsequent advertisement," as per TNIE.