15 teachers’ unions to protest TET condition for promotions at Anandpur Sahib on Feb 22

Teachers with less than five years of service left before retirement are exempt from clearing the TET to continue in their current roles, but they cannot be promoted unless they pass the test. Teachers with more than five years of service must clear the TET within a two-year grace period (by August 2027) to both remain in service and stay eligible for career advancement. The SC invoked Article 142 to ensure uniform teacher quality standards across India, ruling that the TET is a baseline requirement for teaching Classes 1 to 8 under the Right to Education (RTE) Act.

The DTF said that they “condemn the Punjab government’s decision not to promote teachers without TET instead of making sincere efforts to remove the TET condition imposed on teachers appointed before the first TET was conducted in the state (2011)”.

DTF state president Vikram Dev Singh said, “The TET exam was started in 2011 under the Right to Education Act (RTE). It is unfair to impose the test on the teachers recruited before 2011. They have been in the teaching profession for decades.”

He said teachers recruited before 2011 had also passed competitive examinations held in their time or were selected based on merit criteria.

“The Punjab Education Department never imposed the condition of passing TET on the teachers recruited in 2010 or earlier. Now, it is unreasonable to suddenly bring this condition with reference to the Supreme Court’s decision,” he added.

The DTF alleged that the Punjab government “picks and chooses the implementation of court orders as per its convenience”.

“When the court passes an order in the interests of employees, like equal work for equal pay or implementing a full pay scale, the government avoids implementing it, finding ways to bypass orders, but remains committed to implementing anti-employee decisions,” the DTF alleged.

“At least 15 teachers’ organisations will participate in the joint protest rally. At a meeting, the DTF state committee has decided that office-bearer teachers of unions will not take the forcibly imposed TET exam, and the district committees will also motivate the teachers not to take this exam,” the DTF said in the statement.