The Bihar government has issued directives to District Magistrates (DMs) not to involve school teachers and employees of the state Education department in document verification work for candidates who appeared in the ‘School teacher recruitment (2023) examination’ conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). Chief Secretary Amir Subhani conveyed this in a letter dated September 6 to all DMs in the state.
The letter stated that it had come to the government’s attention that Education department employees and government school teachers were being engaged in document verification and scanning of OMR sheets for the examination. Subhani urged the district administration to immediately cease this practice and refrain from involving education department employees in these tasks.
The chief secretary emphasized that employees from other departments could be engaged in such activities, but teachers and education department officials should be exempt.
Subsequently, the state Education department also sent a letter objecting to the engagement of teachers and other employees in these tasks.
Raju Singh, the convener of the TET Primary Teachers’ Association, commented on the situation, stating that teachers have been demanding an end to their engagement in non-teaching activities, including document verification and election-related work. Singh also questioned the need for document verification before the declaration of results and expressed concern over the waste of manpower.
The BPSC conducted Bihar’s largest school teacher recruitment examination for 1,70,461 school teacher positions from August 24 to August 26. Over 8 lakh aspirants participated in the examination at 870 centers across the state. The document verification process for candidates has been ongoing since September 5 and will continue until September 12.
The Bihar Cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, had approved the recruitment of 1.78 lakh teachers for primary, middle, and upper classes earlier this year, with the entire recruitment process expected to be completed by the end of the year.
