The state primary education board has told Calcutta High Court that 94 candidates who had been appointed as teachers in government-aided primary schools did not write the 2014 Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET), prompting Justice Amrita Sinha to order the termination of their services.
The 2014 TET was held in 2015.
As facts about irregularities in recruitment emerged, the court instructed the board to publish by November 3 the list of those who have got jobs in 2016 and 2020 based on their performance in the 2014 TET.
Earlier, the CBI had written to the board seeking documents related to the 2014 TET in connection with the ongoing probe into the “unfair” selection “of assistant teachers of primary schools”.
A deputy superintendent of police, SIT (special investigation team), CBI, ACB (anti-corruption branch), had written to the president of the board on April 25, seeking a list containing the roll numbers of candidates who had written the 2014 TET, names and addresses of the schools where they had joined, present status of appointment and their contact numbers.
The letter explained the communication was in relation to a case which was registered on June 9, 2022, in compliance with an order passed by Calcutta High Court.
A board official said the CBI found that 96 candidates were recruited after alleged irregularities.
The court asked the board to get the facts verified at its level.
Board president Gautam Paul said their probe revealed that 94 candidates did not write the test at all. It was found two had appeared for the test but some other irregularities could have cropped up in the CBI probe .
“Our lawyer informed the court what our finding was,” Paul told Metro on Tuesday.
Asked about he termination process, Paul said: “We will have to study the court’s order first. The district primary school councils are the appointing authorities. We will speak to the councils about this.”
The 2014 TET and the subsequent recruitment process were conducted by the former board president Manik Bhattacharya who was arrested in October 2022 by the CBI following complaints of corruption in the appointment of teachers.
Asked about the uploading of the panel (break-up of marks at different levels of screening), Paul said: “The panel was uploaded in November last year in compliance with an order of Justice Abhijit Gangopahdyay. The board will bring this to the notice of the court.”
The details of marks that the board uploaded last November for those who were appointed as primary school teachers showed that several of them were marked erroneously while factoring in the weightage of their higher secondary examination scores.