Over 5 lakh applications received so far for 35,726 teacher posts in Bengal schools: WBSSC

Over 5 lakh candidates have so far applied for 35,726 assistant teacher posts in State-run and -aided schools in West Bengal, a senior official said on Thursday.

An online application portal was launched on June 16 to facilitate the process, with the original July 14 deadline getting extended to July 21.

“We are expecting the figure to go up,” West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) chairman Siddhartha Majumdar said.

On May 30, WBSSC had issued a notification for recruitment of 35,726 assistant teachers for Classes 9-12 in State-aided and -run schools in adherence to a Supreme Court directive.

The top court had asked the State government to file a compliance affidavit on the initiation of the recruitment process on or before May 31. In April, the SC had scrapped the entire 2016 State Level Selection Test (SLST) recruitment panel, and annulled 25,753 appointments of teachers for Classes 9-12 as well as Group C and Group D staff.

In the 2016 WBSSC recruitment tests, over 3 lakh candidates had applied for teaching jobs, another WBSSC official said.

After the apex court’s April order, WBSSC had identified 15,403 out of 17,206 teachers as “not found to be specifically tainted”, allowing them to continue receiving salaries until December. The remaining 1,804 teachers have been barred from returning to schools.

Referring to the April 3 verdict and the subsequent order on April 17, WBSSC had earlier said, “The commission and the State government have already applied for review of the said judgment and order, and this exercise is strictly subject to the outcome of the review petition and guidelines of the court to be followed by the commission and the government.”

Reacting to the fresh application process, Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum office-bearer Chinmoy Mondal said, “We have nothing to say about the number of applicants. All we can say is those who had passed the 2016 exams cannot sit with their students who have graduated, done masters and now are aspiring to be teachers.”

“After the SC order, the commission and the Education Department should not have undertaken the process in such a hurry, and instead, could have worked on presenting a water-tight case for ‘untainted teachers’ before the apex court,” he added.