PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa on Friday dismissed a couple of petitions filed by teachers working with government and government-aided schools and colleges which challenged as illegal the orders issued by the Directorate of Education and Higher Education mandating that all teaching and non-teaching staff be vaccinated or submit weekly negative certificates in order to attend duties.
The High Court bench of Justices Sadhana Jadhav and Manish Pitale ruled that the contentions raised by the petitioners were ‘without substance.’
“The contentions raised in these two writ petitions before this court are without any substance and they deserve to be rejected. The apprehensions raised on behalf of the petitioners in these two petitions are totally unfounded and we are of the opinion that the circulars are clearly in public interest, particularly in the interest of the students who are taking education in the concerned schools and colleges,” the High Court ruled.
Via the two petitioners, the teachers expressed apprehensions before the court that “vaccination doses may have detrimental effects on the health and long term effects on the human body” and that asking them to repeatedly get tested for Covid-19 “may damage their nasal cavities.”
Back in June last year, the Directorate of Education had issued a circular insisting that teaching and non-teaching staff of schools and colleges take vaccination doses and if they fail to get vaccinated, they are required to produce RT-PCR reports every week for attending duties.
The petitioners also quoted a circular by the Union Health Ministry pointing to the fact that the ministry specifies that the vaccine is ‘voluntary’.
In response, however, state advocate general Devidas Pangam told the court that it was necessary for the teaching and non-teaching staff of the schools and colleges to be vaccinated because such staff would be interacting with students who are yet to be covered under the vaccination programme.
The Advocate General also brought to the court’s attention that similar circulars issued in different States were challenged in the High Courts and that various HCs had passed orders upholding such circulars especially in the case of a different bench of the Bombay High Court itself that rejected identical contentions raised in a petition that challenged a similar circular issued by the Mumbai Port Trust.
“Even if the petitioners have specific material to support such an apprehension (that vaccination will harm them) or ground of challenge, it would still not take the case of the petitioners any further, for the reason that the impugned circulars specifically provide that if the staff is not able to get vaccinated due to medical reasons, they can produce such a certificate from Medical Board constituted by the Goa Medical College or produce a recommendation of medical experts regarding such an exemption,” the High Court ruled.
