Bhubaneswar, 30th July 2025:In the recruitment process for Trained Graduate Teachers (TGT) for high schools, the Odia language has been neglected. The School and Mass Education Department has overlooked the need to appoint dedicated Odia language teachers. Earlier, during the Leave Training Teacher (LTTR) recruitment, for the first time, independent Odia teachers were appointed. However, in the upcoming TGT recruitment process, there is no separate provision for recruiting Odia language teachers.
As a result, language scholars and educationists are questioning the government’s commitment to Odia identity and language pride.
On July 24, the School and Mass Education Department issued instructions to the Director of Secondary Education to initiate the process for filling up TGT vacancies in high schools. The recruitment drive includes subjects like TGT Arts, PCM, CBZ, Hindi, Sanskrit, PET, and Urdu. However, there is no provision for a separate Odia language teacher.
Even in the original notification for LTTR recruitment, no such provision existed. But it was later amended to create independent Odia teacher posts, reserving 25% of the total TGT Arts positions for Odia. The government had claimed to be prioritizing Odia identity by doing so.
However, now, with the TGT recruitment process underway, there is growing concern about how the government could ignore Odia language posts once again.
Experts argue that, like in LTTR recruitment where 25% of TGT Arts posts were reserved for Odia language teachers, the same 33% reservation should be applied here. Otherwise, they demand the creation of a separate, dedicated Odia language teacher post.
Currently, language subjects like Hindi, Sanskrit, and in some regions Urdu, Bengali, Telugu, have their own teacher positions. So, why not Odia? This question is being asked by language advocates and scholars.
They insist that, to make the Odia language popular and sustainable, independent Odia language teachers must be appointed in high schools.
If the government fails to appoint them separately, they should at least reserve 33% of the TGT Arts positions for Odia language teachers.
In high schools, under TGT Arts, there are only three core subjects: Odia, English, and Social Science (History and Geography). All three contribute to a total of 300 marks. Thus, if a separate Odia post is not created, at least one-third (33%) of the TGT Arts posts should be reserved for Odia.
In the LTTR recruitment process, Social Science was split into History and Geography, and 25% of the posts were reserved for Odia.
Therefore, language scholars and Odia language advocates are now demanding that the same or better measures be taken for TGT recruitment: either create dedicated Odia teacher posts, or reserve a significant percentage of Arts positions for Odia, in respect of the classical language status of Odia.
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