The High Court on Thursday issued a rule seeking explanation as to why the recruitment of government primary school teachers on quota basis should not be declared illegal and against the constitution.

The court also questioned why a directive should not be given to recruit 152 writ petitioners in the vacant posts on basis of merit.

The bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Biswajit Debnath issued the rule during a primary hearing on the writ petition.

Home affairs secretary, public administration secretary, education secretary and director general of the Primary Education Department have been asked to respond to the rule within four weeks.

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Advocate Shamim Shikder appeared for the petitioners while Deputy Attorney General Tushar Kanti Roy represented the state.

On December 14, the final results of Primary School Teacher recruitment exams were published selecting 37, 574 candidates, said lawyer Shamim Sardar.

But it followed the notification issued in 2019, where 60% quota was reserved for women, 20% dependent quota and 20% quota was for men.

“Which violates the section 29 (3) of the constitution,” said Shamim Shikder.

When hundreds of youths are unemployed in the country recruitment of primary school teachers with only 20% quota for male candidates cannot be allowed, he said.

So, 152 candidates including Sanjit Sarkar from Gopalganj, Anwar Hossain from Pabna, Hafizur Molla from Magura who were not recruited filed the writ petition challenging the legality of quota based recruitment process.

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The number of candidates in this year's recruitment test for assistant teachers of primary school was 13,09,461.

At present, there are 65,566 govt primary schools in the country with 4,28,701 vacant teachers’ post.