Lokesh says university faculty recruitment will finish by April 2027; next three DSCs to match first-exam transparency

Human Resource Development Minister Nara Lokesh said on 5 September 2026 that the government would complete recruitment of university faculty — Professors, Associate Professors and Assistant Professors — by April next year. Speaking at the State-level Best Teacher Awards ceremony in Vijayawada, he also said the next three District Selection Committee teacher recruitment examinations would be conducted with the same transparency as the first.

Mr Lokesh highlighted Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s record of 14 DSC examinations that recruited nearly two lakh teachers, and said that after becoming Chief Minister for the fourth time Mr Naidu’s first signature was on the DSC file. Teaching, he said, was a sacred responsibility because children spent more time with teachers than at home and learnt values, education and discipline from them. He cited A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s teacher Sivasubramania Iyer as an example of practical teaching inspiring extraordinary achievement.

On school reforms already claimed, he listed expansion of the One Class-One Teacher model to 10,000 primary schools, cancellation of GO 117, filling of 16,000 teacher vacancies through Mega DSC, a Teacher Transfer Act and seniority lists, curriculum revision, and the LEAP app for teachers’ service matters. He said 1.10 lakh students had shifted from private schools to government schools this year, attributing the trend largely to teachers’ efforts, and that LEAP Model Schools were planned in every constituency.

School education reforms, he said, were largely complete; the government was now focusing on higher education and universities. A unified university law was planned. Universities would be integrated with emerging sectors such as space, drones, aquaculture, pharmaceuticals and data centres, besides other industrial clusters. Appointments of Vice-Chancellors should be politically neutral, academic calendars stronger, and the state’s goal to stand first in National Institutional Ranking Framework rankings. He also urged attention to students’ mental well-being and treated “No Admission” boards at some government schools as a signal that reforms were beginning to show.

The political context is Teachers’ Day week and a live opposition attack line on DSC 2025. This cutting records Mr Lokesh’s Vijayawada pledges and claimed reform ledger — April 2027 faculty deadline, three more transparent DSCs, unified university law — without inventing a notified recruitment calendar or treating a speech as a finished appointment order. Public copy names him as HRD Minister and TDP leader in the ordinary political sense; it does not invent private family framing.

Teachers’ Day week speeches often mix gratitude with recruitment promises. The locked April 2027 faculty deadline and the pledge of three more transparent DSCs are the political payload readers should carry forward — alongside the claimed 16,000 Mega DSC fills, the 10,000-school One Class-One Teacher expansion, and the 1.10 lakh private-to-government student shift. Higher-education reform language (unified university law, industry-linked courses, NIRF ambition) is directional, not a gazette. This cutting keeps Mr Lokesh’s Vijayawada stage facts and refuses invented counselling dates or VC appointment lists.