Bihar teachers’ recruitment: Opposition parties seek probe as protests continue
Chief minister Nitish Kumar will hand over 25,000 provisional appointment letters to the successful candidates at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on November 2 after the completion of counselling
Opposition parties in Bihar have demanded a probe into the teachers’ recruitment exercise which took place through the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC).
The BPSC started publishing the results of the teachers’ recruitment exam (TRE) in a phased manner from October 17 after which the Bihar’s education department announced that it will start the counselling for the BPSC teachers’ recruitment from October 18.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar will hand over 25,000 provisional appointment letters to the successful candidates at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on November 2 after the completion of counselling.
Also Read: Govt begins teachers’ counselling; Bihar CM to give appointment letters on Nov 2
BPSC is working on a war footing to complete the exercise with officials and staff working overtime even during the holiday season.
Against 1.70-lakh vacancies, as many as 1,22,324 candidates qualified, leaving 48,137 seats vacant.
The vacant seats could rise given the fact that around 45,000 teachers appointed are already employed while over 20,000 are said to be from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and other states.
Many candidates remain under suspicion due to wrong spellings of names and incorrect Aadhaar numbers or missing names.
“When we are dealing with such large numbers as in TRE, multi-layer filtering is needed to weed out undeserving ones. This is what’s going on and that’s why all results are conditional. Any vacancy arising out of this filtering will be filled by one or more supplementary results. Very soon we will be declaring cut off marks in all TRE papers,” BPSC chairman posted on X (formerly Twitter) account on Wednesday, as students have been constantly raising apprehensions of foul play in the exam results and expressing surprise over delay in publication of cut-offs.
Earlier, department of education and the state commission had remained at loggerheads over document verification of all the candidates even before recommendation of names of successful candidates.
“It is a botched-up exercise and the government must admit it. It is just a ploy to keep the teacher aspirants’ involved. We have never heard of a recruitment exercise through a state commission that issues provisional appointment letters with so many ifs and buts. It shows the incompetence of the recruiting agency and the government. I will make a big revelation soon about the grave irregularities committed in the recruitment to play with the future of youth,” said leader of Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha.
Former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) echoed similar sentiments and likened the exercise to the alleged railways land-for-jobs case.
“In Railways, it was land for job, but in case of teachers it seems to be money for job. Reservation provisions have also been ignored. It requires a high-level probe. If an inquiry is conducted, many people will be exposed. It is a cruel joke with the youth of the state,” he added.
BJP state president Samrat Choudhary also criticised the state government led by chief minister Nitish Kumar.
“We don’t know exactly how many fresh candidates will genuinely get jobs. This is a scam. Even a straight forward recruitment exercise has been reduced to a laughing stock, as the intent was never there. I have always said that there is no point taking exam and reissuing appointment letters to teachers already working for years just to inflate numbers. But the same is happening. The entire exercise is illegal. Where are the new candidates and how many?” he asked.