L-G nod to revival of lapsed 126 posts of principals, others in Delhi govt schools

New Delhi: Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena has approved 126 posts of principals and deputy education officers in city government-run schools which had lapsed as these were “lying vacant” for more than two years, Raj Niwas officials said on Saturday.

The officials have alleged that the lapse has happened due to “apathy and inaction of the AAP government”.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, meanwhile in a statement, retorted that this claim was a “new bunch of lies” and a “blatant attempt to hide” the fact that the central government and the L-G office have “stalled the appointment of principals in Delhi government schools for more than seven years”.

Earlier in the day, Raj Niwas officials had also said that the L-G has also put on hold a proposal to abolish 244 posts of principals and deputy education officers as “proposed by the city’s education department” since these posts had also been lying vacant for more than five years.

In a move that would help the “woefully short-staffed” education department of the Delhi government, especially at the cutting-edge level, Lt Governor Saxena has “approved the revival of 126 posts of principals, deputy education officers that had lapsed due to the fact that they were lying vacant for more than two years,” officials said.

The L-G has asked the education department to submit a suitable proposal for abolition or creation of posts of a principal or deputy education officer “after getting the comprehensive study conducted from the AR department, as pointed out by the Services Department,” a senior official said.

Government rules provide for posts lying vacant for more than two years to be considered as “deemed abolished” and for those lying vacant for more than five years to be “considered abolished”, officials said.

These 370 posts (126 deemed abolished posts and 244 considered abolished posts) were supposed to have been filled in through promotion as per the Recruitment Rules by the Directorate of Education from the year 2013-14 to 2019, they said.

Sisodia, in his statement, issued by his office also claimed that right after the formation of the AAP government in 2015, it had “approached the UPSC to fill 370 vacant posts of principals”.

In the meantime, in 2015 itself, the services department was “unconstitutionally taken away from the purview of elected government and handed over to the L-G,” he alleged.

Hence, effectively it was the Lt Governor who was responsible for these appointments and was supposed to act promptly to get these appointments done, the deputy chief minister said.

“For reasons best known to L-G office, these appointments were not allowed to happen for one pretext or the other. So much so, the education minister, understanding the pain of running the schools without principals, held a series of meetings with services department, but they were under the direct instructions to not expedite the process,” he said.

And now, after so much effort by the education minister, despite repeated stalling by the L-G, his office is “shamelessly claiming that he has revived 126 post, hiding the fact that he has actually abolished the 244 school principal posts on the ground that they are lying vacant for the last more than five years,” Sisodia alleged.

“We urge the Hon’ble L-G to stop playing dirty politics. First, he has stalled the foreign travel of teachers to attend a training in Finland, and now he wants to abolish 244 posts of school principals under the false claim of reviving 126 posts,” he charged.

The deputy chief minister said the government welcomes the revival of 126 posts after repeated efforts of the education minister, but if the L-G is really sincere and is “not playing politics again, he should give a date by which the remaining 244 posts will be revived,” the deputy CM said.

It is a matter of fact that 244 posts of principals are also needed because they exist in the schools which are functioning without principals for so many years. What kind of so-called “comprehensive study” will add more value to the fact that a principal is needed in a school which is functioning without a principal, he further said.