Kolkata: Around 3.19 lakh candidates are likely to take the fresh teacher recruitment exam on Sunday, which is being held on the orders of the Supreme Court. Teacher recruitment exam was last held in the state in 2016.
On April 3 this year, the apex court while upholding a decision of the Calcutta high court had cancelled the appointments of 25,752 school teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools. The apex court had ordered a fresh exam after cancelling the entire panel of 2016.
“While on Sunday 3,19,650 candidates will take the recruitment exam for appointment of teachers in classes IX and X in government schools, another 2,54,000 candidates will appear for the recruitment exam for teachers in classes XI and XII on September 14,” said an official of the West Bengal School Service Commission.
On Friday the WBSSC published a list of 35,726 vacant posts in state run schools for which the recruitment exams were being held. While there are 23,212 vacant posts for teachers for classes IX and X, there are 12,514 vacant posts for teachers in classes XI and XII.
Top officials of the WBSSC said on Saturday that multiple unique security features have been added to the question papers for detecting any malpractices during the exam.
“We have embedded some unique identification security features with every question paper, which would help to identify every candidate. In case of any malpractices that will be immediately detected through an alert at the monitoring room, where the candidate concerned will be identified and appropriate follow-up steps taken,” Siddhartha Majumdar, WBSSC chairman, told reporters on Sunday.
The investigation into the irregularities in recruitments in government schools started in May 2022 when the Calcutta high court ordered CBI to probe the appointments of non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by the WBSSC and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education between 2014 and 2021. The appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs. ED started a parallel investigation.
After a series of hearings at the high court, the appointments of all 25,752 school teachers and non-teaching staff (Group-C and D) from the 2016 recruitment panel were cancelled by the bench of the Chief Justice of India on April 3. The bench said there was no way to segregate the tainted from the non-tainted.
On an appeal by the state, the top court said on April 17 that the non-tainted teachers may be allowed to continue in service until December 31 but they must go through a fresh selection test.
The top court ordered WBSSC on August 28 to release the list of tainted candidates after a section of the job losers complained that the tainted appointees were allowed to sit for the exam in violation of the Supreme Court order. The apex court directed the WBSSC to ensure that no tainted candidates were allowed to take the fresh recruitment test.
