Bihar teacher recruitment scam: 24,000 might lose jobs over forged documents, ineligibility

In a shocking development, a massive scam has come to light regarding the recruitment of government school teachers in Bihar. At least 24,000 candidates in the state are at the risk of losing their jobs. These candidates allegedly became teachers by submitting forged marksheets, education certificates, caste certificates, and without qualifying for the necessary criteria. These teachers were recruited by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) over the past one year. The procedure to verify the documents submitted by the teachers has been started.

The education department will be taking disciplinary action against these 24,000 teachers. The state government might terminate them from service, recover their salary and register cases against teachers for indulging in malpractices.

A case has already been registered against seven teachers, including five female teachers, in Sitamarhi district for submitting forged documents and adopting unfair means to get the job.

The scam

A large-scale teacher recruitment drive was recently conducted by the state government to fill vacancies in 85,000 schools under which over 2.17 lakh teachers were hired since November 2023. The hiring was done through the Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE) 1 and 2 conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC).

After the education department conducted enquiries, it has been revealed that at least 4,000 of these teachers possess fake educational degrees, marksheets and certificates, while the other candidates have secured below the 60 per cent score criteria in the CTET (Central Teacher Eligibility Test).

“We are examining the documents submitted by the recently appointed teachers. Around 20,000 of them do not possess the advertised recruitment criteria of a minimum 60 per cent score in the CTET. Many of them have scores that are around 50 per cent, yet they applied and got selected in the recruitment examination and joined as teachers,” said a senior official from the education department.

“We also detected fake marksheets and certificates submitted by hundreds of teachers. Many of the newly appointed teachers, especially those from other states, have claimed reservation benefits despite not being eligible for them. There have also been cases of the appointed men and women submitting fake caste and residence certificates to claim reservation benefits,” the education department official further informed.

Discrepancy in counselling

The recruitment scam comes after the recent counselling sessions held for 1.87 lakh candidates in the state who qualified the “competency test” to avail the “government employee” status, during which significant discrepancies were observed. Counselling was conducted for a large number of teachers between 1st and 13th December 2023.

After the initial counselling of the successful candidates, many mark sheets raised suspicions, prompting the education department to forward these documents to the relevant universities for further examination.

“The educational and reservation-related documents of a large number of these teachers were never verified. Fake marksheets and degrees are being detected during their counselling,” a senior education department officer informed.

However, counselling was not done for around 42,000 teachers, while over 3,000 were absent. Biometric verification was not completed for more than 10,000 of these candidates. Many teachers who did not participate in the counselling sessions are now under scrutiny.