Chandigarh, Nov. 18 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has ordered the regularisation of 700-odd teachers working in Chandigarh schools under the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), many since 2005. "The petitioners were appointed after following due procedure. They are fully qualified. They have been working with UT Chandigarh since 2005 and that too without any protection of this court or any other court. They were selected against posts sanctioned by the project approval board. They cannot be denied regularisation on the basis of absence of posts or regularisation policy," the bench of justice Jagmohan Bansal observed while ordering regularisation of services of not only the petitioners but also of similarly placed teachers who have completed 10 years of service with the Chandigarh administration. The court directed UT to take needful action within six weeks for the implementation of this judgment and if no order of regularisation is passed within the given timeframe, the teachers would be "deemed to be regularised". As per the teachers, there are around 1,300 posts of Trained Graduate Teachers (TGT) and junior basic training (JBT) teachers, sanctioned under the SSA. Out of that 200 are vacant and approximately 700 teachers are such who have completed 10 years of service and would be benefitted from this order immediately. "The ruling is expected to benefit over 1,000 teachers and reshape the hiring policy in the UT's school system," said one of the lawyers, Himanshu Malik. The petition was from Arvind Rana and others who had challenged the 2021 decision of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which had rejected the UT's proposal of regularising services of these teachers. They had demanded that authorities be directed to integrate the services of the petitioners into the regular cadre of the education department of Chandigarh. The Centre in 2004 visualised SSA as an integrated programme to attain universal elementary education in thecountry. The court found that the petitioners are not backdoor entrants and due process of written test, interview, medical examination and police verification etc was followed in their recruitment. The court found that the Centre asked other states to maintain a unified cadre of teachers but in the case of Chandigarh, asked it to continue with contractual appointments despite a red flag raised by UT in 2013. The court observed that as per the judgment of this court as well as the Supreme Court, ad hoc, temporary, part time, daily wage or contractual workers cannot be regularised if their appointment was not made as per procedure prescribed for regular appointments. "Despite being repeatedly asked, the learned counsel for the respondent could not point out any judgment where regularisation was denied in spite of appointment after following due procedure. The petitioners are not backdoor entrants and they were appointed against sanctioned posts. The respondent, in the teeth of SC's Uma Devi judgment, continued to engage petitioners on contract basis. Judgments cited by respondents criticise irregular and backdoor entry. By placing reliance upon Uma Devi, the respondents have raised a self-contradictory stand," it said....