A massive scam has been discovered in the recruitment of government school teachers in Bihar by the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) over the past year.

At least 24,000 of them allegedly became teachers either with the help of fake education certificates, caste certificates, or without fulfilling any criteria.

Enquiries conducted by the education department revealed that around 4,000 of them have fake educational degrees, marksheets and certificates, while the rest did not fulfil the 60 per cent score criteria in the CTET (Central Teacher Eligibility Test).

The Bihar government has been conducting a large-scale recruitment drive for teachers to fill vacancies in 85,000 schools. It has appointed around 2.17 lakh teachers since November 2023, through the Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE) 1 and 2 conducted by the BPSC.

Over 87,000 more teachers are to be appointed through TRE 3.

“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,” a senior official of the education department told The Telegraph.

“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 added.

Sources in the education department said that the probe into the documents submitted by the teachers was still underway and “the numbers may increase further”. Also, around 10,000 of them did not turn up for their biometric verification leading to suspicion that they could have adopted unfair means in the recruitment examination.

The additional chief secretary of the education department, S. Siddharth, did not respond to calls or messages made by this newspaper to inquire about the government’s next steps.

However, sources said that the state government is considering termination of service, recovery of salary and registering cases against the teachers who indulged in malpractices. Officials have already started writing to the concerned colleges and universities to verify the documents submitted by the teachers.

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

Around 1.87 lakh out of 3.5 lakh contractual teachers previously appointed through the local self-governance bodies in the rural and urban areas have recently cleared the “competency test” to avail the “government employee” status.

“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 said.

Going by the precedent, the unfolding scam does not come as a surprise. A vigilance probe into the educational documents of school teachers appointed by the rural and urban local self-governance bodies between 2006 and 2015 is still pending.

The Patna High Court ordered the Vigilance Investigation Bureau (VIB) on May 18, 2015, to collect all folders containing the teachers’ documents within three weeks and thoroughly verify them.

This resulted in hundreds of FIRs and the removal of a few thousand teachers but the VIB officials are still searching for the missing folders. A fire had destroyed a large number of folders that were collected by them.