On candidate’s plea, HC asks Gujarat government to produce teacher recruitment timeline

According to the plea, the government's letter reached the petitioner on July 29, 2025, after the final merit list for the post was published on July 17. The government subsequently issued a waiting list on September 19, 2025, the plea stated.

The Gujarat High Court has directed the state government to produce the entire timeline of recruitment for a category of teachers, from April 2025, to ascertain if a vacant post was available to accommodate a candidate who had missed the process because of emergency hospitalisation.

Justice Aniruddha P Mayee was hearing a petition last month filed by Sushila Maheriya, through advocate Swapneshwar Goutam, stating that she missed the document verification process, between April 19 and April 25, 2025, in the recruitment drive for around 1,500 posts of Shikshan Sahayak (teaching assistant) because she was hospitalised following a seizure.

The plea, filed in June this year, stated that Maheriya “had suffered severe seizure on account of past history of brain stroke” and was admitted to hospital on April 17, 2025. She was discharged on April 19, 2025, the day the verification window for the recruitment opened.

The petitioner submitted that, owing to ongoing treatment, she could not approach the authorities during this window. She later made a representation to the state’s Commissioner of Schools, a respondent in the petition, to consider her case for document verification “since the recruitment process was not completed,” citing her medical reason for absence. That representation “has been rejected,” the advocate said.

In the plea, the petitioner stated that she wrote to the authorities on June 16, June 18 and July 12, 2025, about her hospitalisation and missed verification. On July 16, 2025, the plea said, she was told that verification was over and her application could not be considered because the selection procedure was complete.

According to the plea, the government’s letter reached the petitioner on July 29, 2025, after the final merit list for the post was published on July 17. The government subsequently issued a waiting list on September 19, 2025, the plea stated.

Issuing notice to the state government, the court in an oral order dated October 14 directed the Assistant Government Pleader to take instructions and file a reply before the next hearing on November 30. The reply, the court said, “shall enumerate the timeline of the process (from April 19, 2025) till the appointments were made to the various posts” and also state whether any post is vacant “as on date or not”.

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The petitioner submitted that she had withdrawn an earlier petition in the High Court in May 2025 to be able to make a representation to the state government’s Education department. The submission stated that she was called for a personal hearing before the office of the Commissioner of Schools on December 4, 2025. The petition says the Joint Education Director referred the matter to the Staff Selection Committee. On December 24, 2025, her application was rejected on the ground that she “could have deputed” an officer or person for document verification. Further representations were rejected in January and May 2026, the plea stated.