The state primary education board on Friday asked candidates who had written the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) of 2014 and 2017 to apply for the interview for appointment as teachers in primary schools.
The board came up with the notification hours after police bodily lifted the protesting candidates of the two TETs from a road in Salt Lake’s Karunamoyee early on Friday.
The TET 2014 candidates, who had been blocking the road since Monday, were demanding that they be recruited without having to appear in yet another interview.
They had appeared in at least one interview and many of them in two interviews.
The TET 2017 candidates were opposed to the demand, fearing that the all the vacancies would be filled with the 2014 batch if the government accepted their demand that they be allowed to skip the interview.
The board’s notification says interviews will be held for 11,765 candidates for the post of assistant teachers in government-aided, government-sponsored and junior basic primary schools.
The TET-qualified candidates who had not turned 40 on January 1, 2022, can apply between October 21 and November 14 to appear in the interview.
“The application form for appointment will be available at the online portal for submission at the following websites: www.wbbpe.org and https:// wbbprimaryeducation.org.
The applicants have to click on the link ‘Application for Recruitment-2022,” the notification says.
The interview dates will be announced later. The protesting candidates from the 2014 batch had failed to make it to the final list for appointment on the basis of scores obtained in each stage of the screening, such as written test and interview.
They believe they were denied jobs because of irregular recruitments made during the tenure of Manik Bhattacharya as president of the primary education board.
Bhattacharya is in custody on charges of irregularities in appointments. A board official said they rejected the demand of the 2014 batch because it would be unfair to ask the candidates from the 2017 batch to appear in the interview, while allowing those from the other batch to skip the process.
“On Thursday, the 2017 batch hit the streets against the demand raised by the 2014 candidates that they be recruited without having to appear in a fresh interview. A fresh legal tangle is bound to crop up if we allow a particular batch to skip the interview and get appointed straightaway. This would only create further stumbling blocks in recruitment,” an official of the board said.
Education minister Bratya Basu had on Wednesday asked why the protesters from the 2014 batch “are not moving Calcutta High Court” for a directive exempting them from appearing in the interview.
Till Friday no such prayer was filed in the court.
The board in its notification on Friday has come up with the district, medium and category-wise vacancy positions in primary schools across Bengal. An official of the board said the entire interview process would be video recorded.
“Many of 2014 TET candidates alleged that they were marked poorly despite answering questions satisfactorily in the interview held during the tenure of Manik Bhattacharya. We will video record the entire procedure this time so no one can raise such allegations,” the official said.
The board has notified the guidelines for the candidates who will write the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) to be held on December 11.
“Those who will crack this TET are likely to be called for interview before the 2023 Puja,” said an official of the education department.