Hon’ble Sudhanshu Dhulia, J. (Oral)

1. In all the above bunch of writ petitions what is under challenge is the recruitment process for selection and appointment of primary school teachers in the State of Uttarakhand where the issue is whether the qualification of Teachers Eligibility Test (hereinafter referred to as “TET”) is mandatory or can be exempted by the State Government in a certain contingency and consequently if the same can be exempted to a particular group of persons whether the same exemption is also liable to be given to the petitioners as well. In all the above writ petitions (barring WPSS No. 1528 of 2012), the petitioners are Basic Teacher Certificate (hereinafter referred to as “BTC”) qualified candidates. However, they have done the BTC training and the qualification under a special category inasmuch as all the petitioners prior to getting the said training were employed as “Shiksha Mitras” and in that capacity were teaching in primary schools in the State of Uttarakhand. However, since in order to become primary school teacher BTC training was mandatory, all such “Shiksha Mitras” have been granted this training (by virtue of their being “Siksha Mitra”)