The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Friday granted interim relief to thousands of serving teachers in Uttar Pradesh holding an 18-month Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed.) through Open and Distance Learning (ODL) from the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS). In an interim order, the court permitted them to appear in the Uttar Pradesh Teacher Eligibility Test (UPTET) 2026, subject to the final decision on the petition.
“In such circumstances, respondent no. 2 is directed to allow the petitioners and other similarly situated candidates to appear in the UP-TET examination, 2026 provisionally, subject to their fulfilling the criteria that they were employed on or before 10.08.2017 and are having 18 months diploma in D.El.Ed.-ODL. However, their consideration shall abide by the final outcome of this petition,” the court said in its order.
A single bench of Justice Rajeev Singh passed the order on a petition filed by 36 such teachers, including Shubham Kumar Shukla. The petitioners’ counsel submitted that declining their participation in the Teacher Eligibility Test was contrary to recent clarifications issued by the Supreme Court.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Rajat Rajan Singh, stated that ODL diploma holders in Uttar Pradesh were being denied eligibility for the UPTET 2026, the mandatory qualifying exam for teaching appointments in the state. The petitioners approached the high court against it.
The petitioners’ counsel urged the court that denying candidates who met the Supreme Court’s criteria—being in service as of August 10, 2017, and having completed an 18-month ODL diploma—from participating in the TET was contrary to binding directives issued in several judicial decisions.
The court has given time to the state government, the examination commission and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) to file their respective affidavits in the case.
The next hearing in the case will be on May 22.
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