Chief minister Nitish Kumar handed over appointment letters to around 1.14 lakh contractual school teachers on Wednesday, thereby turning them into government employees after they had qualified in the recent competency tests.

The teachers, who received the appointment letters, included 98,349 primary school teachers, 12,524 of secondary school teachers and 3,265 higher secondary school teachers.

With these appointments, the government schools got a new category of “special teachers” apart from the existing three categories – regular teachers, contractual teachers, and the teachers recruited through exams conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission.

“Large scale appointments of contractual teachers were done through panchayats and urban local bodies from 2006-2007... They were demanding to be made ‘government teachers’,” Kumar said at the function organised to hand over the appointment letters.

“We took a decision in 2023 to conduct an examination to give them an opportunity to become government teachers, and decided to give them five attempts to qualify in it. Two tests have been conducted till now, in which 1.88 lakh contractual teachers qualified in the first one. The certificates belonging to 1.14 lakh of them were verified,” he added.

Kumar told that the newly-appointed government teachers will now be working at their present postings and the decision regarding their new postings will be taken later.