Moving a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), Advocate Debjani Sengupta submitted that the certificates of PTTI students — who had secured diploma from an institution that is not recognised by the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE)— had become invalid according to an order passed by the High Court on October 1, 2008.

The court had derecognised 121 PTTI institutes on the grounds that they were operating without NCTE’s permission.

Following this, the certificates of about 75,000 PTTI students became invalid as they had secured certificates from derecognised institutions during the period 1998 and 2006.

The PIL stated that about 45,000 PTTI students are working in primary schools with invalid certificates. According to Sengupta, when these students got the jobs, their degrees were not termed as invalid.

“How can they be allowed to continue with their services with invalid certificates?” she asked.