Court action in the matter of appointment of Commissioner of School Education....

The Chennai High Court has dismissed a case challenging a government order transferring the powers of the Director of School Education to the Commissioner. In the petition filed by Karunakaran, a retired teacher from Ariyalur, he pointed out that the primary education officers with long experience in school administration had been appointed as associate directors and then directors of the school education department.

The post of Commissioner of School Education was created in November 2019. He said the appointment of the officer to the post was overseen by the school administrations and the post of commissioner with no special qualifications or experience was unnecessary as he was already the secretary of the school education department. In this situation, he said that the government of Tamil Nadu had given the powers of the Director of School Education to the Commissioner on May 14 and it was wrong to appoint a person with experience in the field of education as the Director instead of the Commissioner.

When the case came up for hearing in the session of Chief Justice Sanjiv Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamurthy, the Attorney General of Tamil Nadu Shanmugasundar argued that the notice was issued on the basis of an order issued by the Central Government in 2014 and that three IAS officers had previously held the post of Commissioner of School Education. Accepting this, the judges dismissed the case, saying that the appointment of officers was within the personal jurisdiction of the state and that the courts could only intervene if the appointment was illegal.