The Bengal government has published within a month of completion of interviews a merit list of 15,248 candidates who will be appointed as primary school teachers.

Officials said the recruitment process was likely to be completed in a week. Many of them admitted that they had rarely seen such promptness in appointing teachers.

The West Bengal Board of Primary Education usually takes several months after concluding the interviews to publish the merit list.

The weeklong interview of the aspirants had started on January 10.

On Monday night, the board came up with a notice announcing the publication of the merit list.

Aspiring teachers have been among the most vocal critics of the Mamata Banerjee government in recent times.

The resentment against the government heightened after the high court had on December 11 quashed the process initiated by the school service commission to recruit around 15,000 teachers for upper primary schools (Classes V to VIII).

The day the judgement was delivered, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that 16,500 teachers would be appointed at the primary level (Classes I to IV).

The candidates who had cracked the teacher eligibility test (TET) and undergone DLD (diploma in elementary education) training were interviewed from a pool of aspirants. They had applied between December 23 and January 6.

“We were eagerly looking forward to faster recruitment at some level after the court had struck down appointments at the upper primary level,” said an official of the school education department.

The notice from the board says 1,216 remaining posts have been kept vacant “for further recruitment of the same recruitment process from out of remaining candidates who had submitted online applications but are not included in the above merit list ….as well as candidates who had submitted their applications offline pursuant to the orders passed by the Hon’ble High Court and others”.

Para-teachers, who have been vocal against the gov-ernment over the past two years, have been given preference in the recruitment process.

Para-teachers were appointed by the respective school management committees between 2007 and 2009 before the implementation of the right to education act, which mandates that all children aged between six and 14 will be covered under the school education system.