The high court has asked the state primary education board to oversee the task of reviewing if some of the questions set in the (teachers’ eligibility test) TET 2021 and 2022 were wrong.

The president of the state primary education board, Gautam Paul, on Friday said Justice Biswajit Basu gave the directive last Monday after the board moved a petition before the court seeking to know whether the board could oversee the process.

TET is held to shortlist candidates to be appointed as assistant teachers in government and aided primary schools (Classes I to V).

Those successful in TET have to clear the interviews subsequently to get recruited.

The court has engaged experts one each from Visva Bharati University, Calcutta University and the primary board to check whether some of the questions set in TET had been set erroneously and has now asked the board to oversee the exercise.

A board official said the re-evaluation is crucial as the board could not hold interviews of the candidates who cracked TET 2022 because of the dispute over the alleged incorrect questions.

The fate of the 7,000-odd candidates who had been appointed based on TET 2021 (notification issued in 2017) also depends on the outcome of the re-evaluation.

The board president said they could not publish the results of the TET held in December 2023 and has decided against holding the test further until they could interview the candidates who cracked the exam in 2022.

“The court has asked the board to oversee the exercise of reevaluating the questions with the experts. We approached the court seeking to know if the board could oversee the task. The exercise would be initiated soon,” board president Paul told The Telegraph.

“If we went ahead with overseeing the task in the absence of a directive from the court, this could lead to the filing of fresh litigations. The court’s previous order did not make it clear who would spearhead the exercise.”

A division bench of Calcutta High Court in August set up a three-member expert committee to find out whether questions in the TET held in 2021 and 2022 had errors.

The Supreme Court in late October upheld the Calcutta High Court’s directive to look into the complaints about incorrect questions in the TET.

A board official said they would soon write to the experts to meet and tell them to carry out the process at the earliest.

“The recruitment process has been held up in schools following the litigation against TET. Schools are struggling to hold classes because of a lack of adequate teachers. Now that the court has constituted a committee and has entrusted the board with the responsibility of overseeing the process, we hope the stalemate over the recruitment will end,” said an official of the education department.

Board president Paul had told this newspaper on October 26 that they did not want to hold any tests (TET) afresh before carrying out the recruitment process based on the tests that have been already held before.