New Delhi: The government of Delhi announced on Thursday, September 10th, that its system of re-employment of teachers and principals in schools will be discontinued immediately. Udit Prakash Rai, the Director of the Directorate of Education (DoE), said that this system was notified and extended to the vice-principals and the principals. This move was introduced in light of the vast number of vacancies that were available earlier.
“However, the department has been able to fill a large number of vacant posts through direct recruitment, therefore the system of re-employment is no longer required,” Prakash said.
“All types of re-employment granted for the session 2020-2021 in government-aided schools shall cease to be in force with immediate effect and no re-employment shall be granted to teachers, vice principals and principals,” He added.
The order that ended re-employment of teachers
The order, dated 10 September 2020 and signed by Udit Prakash Rai as Director (Education), is reproduced in full in a later Delhi High Court judgment. Its subject line left no room for doubt: discontinuing the provision of re-employment in respect of teachers, vice principals and principals. The operative sentence was a single line: “the provision of Re-Employment of Teachers/Vice Principals/Principals is discontinued with immediate effect.” Until then, a retired teacher could be re-employed against a clear vacancy, subject to fitness and vigilance clearance, on an annual contract up to the age of 65.
The order covered both government and government-aided schools, and it worked in two directions at once. Re-employment already granted for the 2020-21 session ceased to be in force straight away, and no fresh re-employment of teachers, vice principals or principals would be granted. Staff who had stayed on after retirement under annual contracts were, in effect, out of their classrooms from the date of the order, partway through the academic session.
Directorate of Education: Udit Prakash Rai’s reasoning
The stated reason was recruitment. The department had “recently been able to fill a large number of vacant posts through Direct Recruitments”, the order recorded, so the system was no longer required. A PTI report carried by Deccan Herald that night gave the same explanation.
The affected staff read the numbers differently. In their later court challenge they told the Delhi High Court that 24,582 teaching posts were lying vacant until 2020-21, that around 9,000 posts of principals, vice principals and teachers were still unfilled on 10 September 2020, and that the services of 1,600 re-employed teachers had been ended without prior notice. The court recorded those figures as the petitioners’ averments and ruled without going into the authenticity of the data.
How the re-employment system grew
Re-employment in Delhi’s schools was never meant to be permanent, but it lasted 13 years. The High Court judgment traces the scheme to Cabinet Decision No. 1113 of 4 September 2006, followed by a notification of 29 January 2007 in which the Lieutenant Governor allowed automatic re-employment of retiring teachers up to postgraduate teacher level, subject to fitness and vigilance clearance, until the age of 62. The petitioners dated the thinking even earlier, pointing to a December 2005 notification that had raised the retirement age for teachers under the Directorate of Technical Education from 60 to 62.
Guidelines issued on 28 February 2007 tightened that position: re-employment would be considered only against a clear vacancy. An order of 27 January 2012 extended the scheme to principals and vice principals of government and government-aided schools, for one year at a time and extendable by one more year; that extension followed directions of the High Court in a writ petition, so the scheme’s growth was itself partly court-driven. The last substantive change came on 24 September 2013, when the government made clear that re-employment would not be automatic: it would run on year-to-year annual contracts, linked to vacancies, with a maximum age of 65.
Under the Delhi School Education Rules, 1973, teachers, vice principals and principals hold office until the age of 60. Everything beyond that, the courts would later say, was not a matter of right.
Since then: two courts upheld the order
The order was challenged almost immediately, and the first challenge failed within a month: the Central Administrative Tribunal dismissed O.A. No. 1436/2020 on 7 October 2020, observing that a retired employee has no right to be re-employed. A group of affected staff then moved the Delhi High Court as the Society for Teachers’ Cause, arguing that the termination came without prior notice and offended Articles 14, 16, 19 and 311 of the Constitution, that they had a legitimate expectation of two years of uninterrupted work, and that a Director could not wind up a scheme approved by the Cabinet and issued in the Lieutenant Governor’s name.
The government’s answer in court was the same as the order’s: re-employment of teachers was a policy decision, always subject to vacancies, and the position changed once direct recruitment had been completed.
A bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna reserved judgment on 26 September 2023 and dismissed the petition on 2 April 2024. The court held that the policy on re-employment of teachers gave no vested right, that the change was made only due to “supervening and overriding public interest” once direct recruitment had filled the posts, and that the Directorate could not be said to have acted without power because the 2007, 2012 and 2013 instruments had been issued under the orders and signature of the Lieutenant Governor. Three and a half years after the circular, the end of re-employment of teachers in Delhi’s schools was final.
The judgment leaned on the terms the government had set from the start. The 2013 notification had already said that if the department filled vacant posts on a regular basis, the tenure of a re-employed teacher would be curtailed on the principle of “first of first out”. Retirement at 60 under the 1973 rules remains the end of service in Delhi’s schools.
