Supreme Court hears Uttar Pradesh's 69,000-teacher list after cut-offs moved

The Supreme Court listed Uttar Pradesh's 69,000 Assistant Teacher recruitment for hearing on 8 September, the first of three days set aside for the file. Justices S.B.N. Bhatti and N.B. Anjaria had earlier said no other case would be taken on 8, 9 and 10 September. The dispute is six years old. About 67,867 teachers appointed in 2020 are already in classrooms. Thousands of other candidates say the reservation arithmetic on the original list was wrong.

The state told the court in July that those 67,867 jobs will not be touched. Anyone who becomes eligible on a revised merit list prepared after the Allahabad High Court's 13 August 2024 order will be offered a vacant post. The government put three conditions on that offer: the candidate must meet every eligibility rule, a vacancy must exist, and the arrangement will not be a precedent.

What the cut-offs did

Pichhra Dalit Sanyukt Morcha officers Sushil Kashyap and Rajesh Chaudhary said the state's own affidavit shows the damage. After a check of the list, the unreserved cut-off rose from 67.11 to 69.46. The Other Backward Class cut-off fell from 66.73 to 65.92. Scheduled Caste stands at 60.14 and Scheduled Tribe at 56.09 on the revised sheet. The morcha's question is simple. If that is now the list, why has it not been published as the original selection list?

The High Court order of August 2024 is the legal hinge. The Supreme Court later refused to treat the state's earlier seat numbers as binding. It told Ankit Goyal, the state's advocate-on-record and the new nodal counsel after Mandeep Kalra was removed, to sort petitioners into three groups by 18 August: candidates hurt by reservation errors, candidates who never went to the High Court, and candidates affected by the Lucknow double-bench order of 13 August 2024.

A one-time settlement that did not close

In late July a different bench, Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, floated a one-time settlement under Article 142 if every side agreed. The state offered 8,270 extra posts, including 3,324 OBC vacancies and 4,946 other empty seats. Reserved-category applicants said they would consent if those posts were filled. Consent affidavits were due. The file did not die there. It is back this week as a three-day final hearing.

For families in Lucknow, Varanasi and the eastern districts the numbers are not abstract. A two-point rise in the unreserved cut-off knocks candidates off a list they thought they had made. A fall in the OBC line pulls others on. Teachers already drawing a salary want a written guarantee that a new list will not send them home. The state's July affidavit tries to give them that. Petitioners want the revised sheet published first, then the vacancies counted in public.

Three days of hearing will not invent posts that do not exist. They can force the state to put one list on the website and to say, seat by seat, who stays, who joins and who is out. That is the only figure that will settle the 69,000-teacher file.