Teachers’ union gives memo to Guv on ‘wrong’ notification

Challenging the alleged incorrect recruitment notification published in the Punjab School Education Department gazette for the recruitment of 2,000 physical training instructor (PTI) teachers, the president of the Unemployed Physical Education Teachers Union, Saurav Rai, along with others, submitted a demand letter to Punjab Governor Gulab Chand Kataria during his Amritsar walkathon tour.

Rai said that the Punjab School Education Department in 2021 had invited applications for the posts of PTI teachers, the advertisement of which was published by the Punjab School Education Department in newspapers. “The applications were invited for CPed, DPed, and BPed teachers. In 2023, the Punjab School Education Department gazette included BPEd, MPEd, DPEd and CPed qualified teachers for these posts, which was now amended again to just CPEd, DPEd and BPEd in 2025, without any notification. This exercise has deprived an opportunity to qualified BPEd and MPEd teachers to apply for the jobs in schools,” he said.

Rai said that more qualified BPEd and MPEd teachers were not considered in this. “ It is clear from this that the Punjab Education Minister is in favour of giving jobs in Punjab to CPEd and DPEd teachers who have passed from outside states, ignoring the youth of Punjab,” said Rai. Before this, the union had already met the Punjab Education Minister and explained the errors in the notification of the gazette, but received no positive response from him in this regard.

Additionally, the union leaders said that for the last 20 years, the recruitment of PTI teachers has not been completed and many teachers have crossed their age limit. Whatever physical education teachers have been recruited in schools till date, it has been done on the orders of the High Court and the Supreme Court. He said that the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s double bench decision of 2010 and 2012 had declared B.P.Ed passed teachers as eligible for recruitment of PTI teachers. The union members demanded that BPE B.P.Ed and M.P.Ed teachers who had obtained their degrees before the date of revision in the Gazette should be included in this recruitment.

Kataria assured the union that he would soon meet the Education Minister and get the gazette changed.

Amritsar