Delhi High Court seeks response from AAP government on plea claiming 63% teachers' posts lying vacant

The Delhi High Court has asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led Delhi government to disclose the number posts of teachers, principals and vice-principals lying vacant in the government run schools in the national capital. .A Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Sachin Datta also directed the State government to place on record the steps taken to fill vacancies and the timeline which will be adhered to filling up the vacancies. The State government was also directed to indicate the deficiency of infrastructure in schools and how it plans to deal with it. .The Court was dealing with a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by one Salek Chand Jain through advocate JK Gupta. The plea stated that there are over 71,000 posts of teachers in 1,027 schools run by the Delhi government. However, only 26,210 teachers are working in these schools, it was contended. "On the one hand, Delhi Govt. has been boasting that the education model of Delhi is one of the best education model in Delhi as well as have state of the Art infrastructure in the Govt. schools but when there is a great scarcity of teaching staff in Govt. schools, how the children get the good education," the plea said. .The plea sated that the Right to Information (RTI) applications showed that on December 31, 2021 out of the 950 posts of principals in government schools, 755 were lying vacant. Over 400 of the 1,670 vice-principal posts were vacant while the situation with regard to physical education, music, drawing and computer science was also dismal, it was stated. .The petition further said that the several government schools do not have well equipped computer labs, science labs or libraries either. "Most of the schools have not been equipped with CCTV cameras and the guards are not there at the main gate of the schools, due to that unwanted and antisocial elements may come in the school and causes nuisance in the school which also hampers the studies of the students in the school," it was submitted. .The PIL, therefore, sought a direction to the State government to fill these vacancies and provide the required infrastructure in the schools. It also demanded that CCTV cameras and biometric machines should be installed in every government school.