Bihar mulls centralised vigil of school teachers’ recruitment for greater transparency

Bihar education department is now working on a mechanism to ensure centralized monitoring of all future recruitments of school teachers, state education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said

Bihar education department is now working on a mechanism to ensure centralized monitoring of all future recruitments of school teachers, state education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said.

Bihar mulls centralised vigil of school teachers’ recruitment for greater transparency

“Now, the effort is to monitor the recruitment process online through a system located centrally in Patna without diluting the role of PRIs and urban local bodies a wee bit. This is only to usher in greater transparency and accountability. We have to recruit another 1.25 lakh teachers and as soon as we get the nod of the court, we will start it,” Choudhary stated.

The past appointment of school teachers was done through the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) and urban local bodies but several controversies were surrounding them. The minister said the objective of the Nitish Kumar government behind decentralising the recruitment process was to vest more responsibility in the PRIs and urban local bodies but due to complaints about irregularities, the matters landed in court.

The minister said that there was no point in making recruitment one year and then dealing with the litigations and court cases for the next 10 years. “We are developing an online process so that the candidates could have a fair idea of every stage – right from the time they apply to the making of the merit list and issue of appointment letters by the recruiting agencies at the level of PRIs and urban local bodies,” he added.

The move is significant as the Bihar’s Vigilance Investigation Bureau (VIB), which is probing the suspected appointment of teachers on forged document by the order of the Patna High Court since 2015, is still unable to complete the exercise due to the education department’s inability to make available nearly one-lakh missing folders. Cooperation from PRIs, many of which underwent change of guard in the last 15 years, was found lacking.

With the court expressing displeasure over the delay, the government recently came up with an alternative mechanism and fixed the accountability on teachers to get their documents verified by uploading them afresh. The teachers have to upload the certificate for minimum eligibility required for their recruitment, their mark sheets along with the application and the recruitment letter on a web portal designed for the purpose.

In the fresh recruitment of around 94,000 primary teachers, the department has, learning from the past, decided to tread cautiously. All the documents will be verified before issuing appointment letters. For the new exercise also, all documents will have to be uploaded on the portal.

The minister said the government was also ready to go ahead with the new recruitment process for teachers fully enforcing the reservation roster formula. The court had earlier stopped the recruitment process following allegations that the reservation roster was not being followed. The hearing in the case is due.

“The government will guarantee adherence to the reservation roster in letter and spirit. The government wants to give benefits to all the categories. We have to carry out around 91,000 recruitments in elementary schools and 30,000 plus in secondary and higher schools. As soon as we get the go-ahead from the court, the process will be on. We will assure the court that there will be no deviation from the roster,” he added.