Aspiring teachers in Bihar use creative tweets to demand appointment letters

The Bihar government is treading cautiously with recruitment of teachers to ensure the process is error-free, unlike the past, leading to reprimands from courts and allegations of irregularities.

Candidates awaiting recruitment as government teachers in Bihar took to Twitter in the run up to Rakshabandhan to step up their demand for counselling and appointment, having successfully completed the first two rounds of the sixth phase of recruitment for over 90,000 teaching vacancies.

Protests were held a couple in June in Bihar to support Secondary Teachers Eligibility Test (STET) qualified candidates. (HT Photo)

#BiharTeachers’sAppointment has gained a lot of traction in the last few days with aspirants tagging chief minister, education minister, additional chief secretary (education) and others with the plea to “release appointment letters”. Women aspirants wrote their messages on their palms using henna before posting it online to align with the festival of Rakshabandhan.

“Till the Bihar government does not give appointment letters to all the selected candidates [in the two rounds] and announces counselling dates for the third round, our Twitter campaign will not end,” the twitter handle @ShikshaBihar declared.

Education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said aspirants should not worry as the delay was procedural in nature. “I have assured them not to worry. All those who have been selected will get their appointment letters but the processes have to be completed. The third stage counselling will also begin and we will issue appointment letters for all of them after verification of documents to avoid hassles post appointment,” he said.

The state government is treading cautiously with recruitment of teachers to ensure the process is error-free, unlike the past, leading to reprimands from courts and allegations of irregularities. A couple of months ago, those who had qualified in the secondary teachers’ eligibility test (STET), were lathi-charged by the police as they protested following a confusion over the merit list issued by the Bihar school examination board (BSEB). The minister later clarified that the STET merit list was only for determining eligibility and the merit list for appointment will be issued by the recruiting agencies at the level of panchayati raj institutions as per the laid down processes.

Earlier, counselling in 400 recruiting agencies at the panchayat level had to be cancelled due to irregularities in the preparation of the merit list. Some more irregularities have surfaced, while the administration awaits counselling reports from around 22 districts.

“Once the reports come and the verification of documents is done, appointment letters will be issued to all those selected, but the processes have to be followed. The schedule for [appointment of] another 30,000 teachers in secondary schools will also be out soon. There are vacancies and the government wants to fill all of them to make sure schools run properly,” said the minister.