Bihar teachers’ appointment probe: Onus now on teachers to prove bona fides
The alternative mechanism puts the onus of verification of documents on the teachers, that too, 10-15 years after they joined service
With Bihar’s vigilance investigation bureau’s (VIB) inability to finish the probe in suspicious teachers’ appointments due to the education department’s failure to provide over one-lakh missing folders, the state government has now shifted the onus of document verification on teachers.
The Patna high court, which ordered the vigilance probe in 2015 into appointments made on the basis of forged documents, will hear the matter again in the first week of February. During the hearing earlier this month, the court had expressed its displeasure over the unending probe. It had also threatened action.
Following this, director primary education Ranjit Kumar Singh wrote to all the district education officers (DEOs) and district programme officers (DPOs - establishment) about an alternative mechanism for verification of documents of teachers’ appointment made between 2006 and 2015, necessitated due to non-cooperation by many recruiting agencies under the panchayati raj system.
The alternative mechanism puts the onus of verification of documents on the teachers, that too, 10-15 years after they joined service. The teachers have to upload the certificates for minimum eligibility required for their recruitment, along with their mark sheets attached with the application and the recruitment letter on a web portal designed for the purpose.
The uploading will be done by the office of the DEO within a specific timeframe. The appointments of teachers, whose documents are not uploaded on the portal, will be deemed irregular.
“Prime facie, their appointment will be considered illegal and irregular and suitable action will be taken. The teachers will be served show cause notice and their service will be terminated and the process initiated for recovery of salary drawn by them as per the provisions in the public demand recovery act,” said the letter from the director.
However, it is silent on how teaching and evaluation by such teachers over the years would be compensated for and what if the teachers, suspected to have been appointed on forged documents, now furnish original documents.
Vigilance officials had earlier said that in the absence of a merit list made at the time of recruitment, it would be tough to find out who benefited from forged documents.
However, in the fresh recruitment of around 94,000 teachers, cleared by the chief minister following huge protests by aspirants, the department has 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,” said Singh.
Last month too, the director had written to all DEOs and DPOs – (establishment) to coordinate with the vigilance officials and hand over the desired documents, as the folders of 110,410 teachers were yet to be submitted. But things still did not move in the desired manner.
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A total of 3.52 lakh teachers, including 2082 librarians were appointed in Bihar, between 2006 and 2015. Of them 3.11 lakh were elementary teachers, including 1.04 lakh Shiksha Mitras appointed for ₹1500/month honorarium and later elevated to the rank of Panchayat teachers. Maximum cases of forgery are suspected to be in the ranks of elementary teachers.
The HC bench of the then chief justice L Narasimha Reddy and justice Sudhir Singh, while ordering a vigilance probe, had observed: "The extent to which the candidates with fake certificates have been appointed as teachers in the past decade is a matter of deep concern. The state government has soft-pedalled the issue for the past one decade…We direct the director general, vigilance, to immediately swing into action and verify the genuineness of certificates of the teachers who have been appointed since 2006.”