The Tamil Nadu government has decided to move the Supreme Court with a Review Petition against its recent judgment mandating that all in-service teachers without the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) qualification must clear it within two years or face compulsory retirement.
The School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi said while the state fully supports TET as a compulsory requirement for all future teacher appointments, applying it retrospectively to existing teachers is "unfair and unsustainable."
The Supreme Court order delivered on September 1 had ruled that teachers failing to clear TET within the two-year window would be compulsorily retired with terminal benefits. Teachers with less than five years of service left could continue until retirement, but without eligibility for promotion.
Tamil Nadu currently employs at least 1.75 lakh teachers, thousands of whom were recruited lawfully under the rules and qualifications in place at the time of their appointment. "To now impose a new qualification decades later and retire them if they don't qualify will cause massive disruption," the Minister cautioned.
The government fears the ruling, if implemented, will trigger mass compulsory retirements, creating crippling teacher shortages and affecting the education of lakhs of students across the state. "Recruiting or training an equivalent number of TET-qualified teachers in such a short time is practically impossible," the Minister added.
The state's legal challenge rests on three key arguments:
RTE Act 2009 sets minimum qualification standards only for new appointments and does not authorise the retirement of existing teachers.
NCTE Notification of 2010, which first introduced TET, exempted teachers already appointed before its issue.
Retrospective enforcement unsettles the rights of lawfully appointed teachers and threatens school stability.
This comes before state assembly elections due in seven months. Reassuring the teaching community, the government said it stands firmly with them. "We will fight vigorously in the Supreme Court to protect teachers' livelihoods and ensure that the right of every child to quality education remains secure," the Minister said.
