Bihar: Interviews for hiring asst professors to begin July 15

The process for the long-awaited appointment of assistant professors for Bihar’s seriously understaffed universities and colleges is set to start from July 15

The process for the long-awaited appointment of assistant professors for Bihar’s seriously understaffed universities and colleges is set to start from July 15.

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Bihar State University Service Commission (BSUSC) has started sending interview letters through email. Candidates will be required to report with the Covid-19 test report of the last 72 hours and all the original documents at the Commission’s office.

BSUSC chairman Rajvardhan Azad said that in the first phase, interview for 25 subjects would be conducted and the second round of short listing for 15 subjects has been done by the experts. “We are starting with five subjects, including Angika, Puran, Prakrit, Persian etc., and after that, the schedule for the second lot of five subjects will be announced. The number of candidates called for interview is approximately three times the number of vacancies in that subject,” he said.

BSUSC had advertised 4,638 vacancies for assistant professors in 52 subjects on September 23, 2020, just ahead of the announcement of state assembly elections. However, soon after the statute for appointment was notified, it had to be amended on the intervention of chief minister Nitish Kumar to give weightage to candidates from Bihar following opposition from many quarters.

Bihar legislature had passed the Bihar State University Service Commission Act in 2017 to vest the power of recruitment back with the commission, which was earlier dissolved in 2007.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Bihar government had constituted the commission in February 2019 with Azad, former chief and professor of ophthalmology at the All India Institute of Medical sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, as the chairman.

Bihar’s universities and colleges have perennially remained understaffed due to delayed appointments, one of the key factors blamed for poor show by state institutions in grading by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

Last time, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) had advertised 3,364 vacancies in 2014, nearly 17 years after the previous advertisement in 1997, and the interview process got underway in 2015 and stretched up to 2020.

Azad said there was a lot of delay owing to assembly election and Covid-19 pandemic, which led to extension of date twice for filling up applications. The last date for submitting online applications was December 10, while it was December 24 for submission of hard copy. “We have completed the first round of preliminary scrutiny for all the subjects and now the second round of scrutiny involving experts of the subjects is on in a phased manner,” he said.

BSUSC has received over 69,000 applications. While the maximum number of applicants are from Bihar, followed by neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, applications have come from almost all states and union territories.

“After first round of shortlisting, around 57,000 were found valid, as many candidates had left the application form incomplete or filled up multiple times. During the second round, the experts assessed the research papers and awards to find out if the research papers are peer reviewed or not. Academic points are calculated automatically and they are added with the scores for research papers, awards, work experience. Now, our effort is to carry out the process in a systematic manner and complete the exercise at the earliest,” he said.

A big gap to bridge

Intro: Bihar’s universities and colleges have perennially remained understaffed due to delayed appointments

Vacancies: 4,638

Subjects: 52

No. of applications: 69,000

Applications found valid: 57,000