LUCKNOW: In a major relief to thousands of Shiksha Mistras who appeared in the Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination-2019 on January 6, 2019, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed the government notification of January 7, 2019, paving the way for more selections of Shiksha Mitras in the recruitment owing to Supreme Court's July 25, 2017, direction to give them 25 percent weightage in next two consecutive selection processes.Through the January 7 notification, the government had fixed 65 and 60 percent minimum qualifying marks for the selection as regard the general and reserved category candidates, respectively. Passing the order, the court directed the secretary, Examination Regulatory Authority (ERA) to declare the result of the said examination in terms of government order of December 1, 2018, and also advertisement of December 5, 2018, in the same manner as the earlier result of Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination-2018 was declared so far as the minimum qualifying marks are concerned.In the 2018 examination, the minimum qualifying marks were fixed 45 and 40 percent respectively for general and reserved category candidates, respectively. Subsequently, the criteria was lowered to 33 and 30 percent, respectively. Allowing dozens of writ petitions filed by Shiksha Mitras, a bench of Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan further directed the concerned authorities to make compliance of the order with expedition, preferably within a period of three months. The court also directed that the entire exercise of selection in question shall be completed at the earliest, strictly in accordance with law, after declaring the result which had been stayed by it on February 19, 2019, as an interim direction. Pronouncing the judgment, the court said, "The Government Order of January 7, 2019 is not sustainable in the eyes of law being arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India as it makes an unreasonable classification (between Shiksha Mitras and non-Shiksha Mitras) by giving different treatment to the two groups of identically situated persons appearing in two consecutive examinations and there is no valid reason and justification for drastically increasing minimum qualifying marks without having any nexus with the object sought to be achieved."Filing the petitions, the petitioners had pleaded that fixing the minimum qualifying marks as 65 and 60% after written examination was unwarranted and arbitrary and as such could not sustain.

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