The state school service commission (SSC) will publish a fresh list of vacant posts to appoint teachers at the upper primary level (Class VI to VIII) because the list that was just published included some posts that do not exist, officials said.

The anomalies were detected during the first round of counselling on October 3 and 4.

Some of the candidates selected during the counselling found that the posts for which they had been given appointment letters did not exist.

Commission chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said they would send the list published last week to the school education department so a fresh list could be published.

An SSC official said they are trying to publish the revised list before October 24, the day the counselling will resume after the Puja recess.

The list that was published on October 1 had 8,500 posts and the names of the schools.

Steps are being taken so those who had been issued appointment letters for non-existent posts could be given jobs in other schools.

“We have received some complaints about the list that has been published. We will soon send the list to the (school education) department so necessary corrections can be carried out and a fresh, flawless list published. The commission is trying to publish the corrected list as early as possible,” SSC chairperson Majumdar told The Telegraph.

The SSC had on October 3 resumed the process of hiring assistant teachers for the upper primary level (Classes VI to VIII) at government-aided schools, eight years after a written test was held to shortlist candidates.

An SSC official said the complaints emerged following the appointment on October 4 of a history teacher in a Hindi-medium school at Kalchini in Alipurduar district.

Once the candidate contacted the head of the school in Kalchini, the headmaster informed him that there was no vacant post in history. The candidate informed the commission of the anomaly.

“After this incident, several other candidates made similar complaints. They were informed by the school heads concerned that the posts for which they had been selected did not exist,” the official said.

The commission had on September 27 published the initial schedule for counselling of candidates who wrote the State Level Selection Test in 2015.

In all, 658 candidates have been called for around 1,000 vacant posts during the initial round of counselling, which started on October 3 and will continue till October 29.

Sushanta Ghosh, president of the West Bengal Upper Primary Teaching Job Aspirants Forum, said: “It was unfortunate that the commission could not make a flawless appointment during the initial round of counselling, for which a relatively small number of teaching job aspirants has been called.”