The school service commission (SSC) has proposed that the OMRs sheets of recruitment tests be preserved for five years and the merit list containing the names, roll numbers and marks of the candidates, including thewaitlisted ones, be signed by an authorised commission official.
The commission’s proposals, which were sent to the education department, and the government’s recommendations have been sent to the law department for evaluation, said an official.
Government sources said that though it was proposed that the OMR sheets be preserved for 12 years, the commission wants them to be stored for five years. In sub-judice matters, the OMR sheets need to be preserved for many years, the education department’s proposals had said.
“We also suggested that the commission complete the counselling process within six months of the drawing up of the merit list. The recruitment in that case can be completed within a year. But the commission has not yet agreed to this proposal,” an education department official said.
“Our proposal, sent in June, is that the OMRs be destroyed after five years from the date of publication of the panel. If we preserve them for 12 years, the entire building of the commission will have to be used to accommodate the scripts.... The commission is an autonomous body and it can decide on its own,” a commission official said.
“Also, given the number of candidates, it is not possible to wrap up counselling within six months. The commission, too, is for time-bound recruitment, but six months is too short a period.”
The commission has proposed that each panel and waiting list remain valid for a year from the date of publication or till the advertisement for the next recruitment process is published, whichever is earlier.
The commission has also proposed that copies of OMR sheets in the recruitment exams for assistant teachers at the secondary and higher secondary level in the government-aided schools be handed to the examinees.
The commission will publish on its website the preliminary model answer keys after the written test and “will invite suggestions and/or objections from the applicants”.
The proposal says an expert committee, made of at least two university professors, “shall deal with the suggestions/objections”.
The commission will evaluate the answers on the basis of the final model answer keys to be published on the commission’s website.
A commission official said they have proposed the steps so they could carry out a fair recruitment process, drawing lessons from the fiasco in previous exams.
The services of 775 secondary school teachers have in recent times been scrapped because the marks of thecandidates recorded on the commission’s server were not in conformity with the responses captured on the OMR sheets.
SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar told Metro: “The SSC is awaiting a response from the department.”
