EGS instructors converted to GVUs are entitled to regularization after eight years’ service.

The petitioners were appointed as Education Volunteers/Instructors between 2001 and 2004 to run EGS/ALS schools.

In 2009, the State converted eligible EGS Instructors, including the petitioners, to Gramin Vidya Upasak (GVU) on a contractual basis.

In 2011, the State decided to regularize GVUs who had completed eight years’ service as of 31 March 2011, and regularized eligible employees as JBT teachers.

The petitioners were later regularized, but challenged the timing of that regularization, seeking it from completion of eight years’ service after their conversion to GVU, with consequential benefits.

The State opposed the claim, relying, among other matters, on the petitioners’ qualifications and the requirements under the Right to Education Act (RTE Act).

1. Whether the petitioners, after being converted from EGS Instructors to GVUs, were entitled to regularization immediately upon completing eight years’ service, on the basis of the State’s 2011 decision concerning GVUs.

2. Whether the RTE Act requirements, including the requirement to pass the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET), barred the petitioners’ claim to regularization.

The Court applied the State’s decision conveyed by letter dated 16 August 2011, under which GVUs who had completed eight years’ service as of 31 March 2011 were to be regularized as JBT teachers and awarded Special JBT Certificates under Chapter VIII, Article 145 of the H.P. Education Code, 1985.

It relied on the equality principle that employees brought into the same class by the State’s decision should not be treated differently without justification.

The Court considered State of Rajasthan v. Daya Lal, (2011) 2 SCC 429, which it distinguished as addressing claims by persons appointed after a cut-off date or seeking successive cut-off dates.

It also considered Section 23(2) of the RTE Act and the 26 March 2012 communication concerning TET, but held that the communication did not apply to the petitioners’ circumstances.

The State had consciously converted the petitioners from EGS Instructors to GVUs; the Court therefore treated them as part of the same class as other GVUs for the purpose of the State’s eight-year regularization decision.

It held that, having extended regularization to GVUs who completed eight years’ service, the State could not deny the same benefit to the petitioners from completion of eight years after their conversion.

Daya Lal did not defeat the claim because the petitioners were not seeking to extend a scheme to persons appointed after its cut-off date.

Nor did the TET communication bar relief, given the petitioners’ service in tribal and difficult areas from 2001 onwards.

The State was directed to regularize the petitioners from the date each completed eight years’ service after conversion to GVU, with consequential benefits including seniority, increments, promotion, and other service benefits.

The directions were to be implemented within six months; if arrears were not paid within that period, interest at 6% per annum would accrue from the date of judgment until payment.

No order as to costs; pending applications, if any, were disposed of.