The Bengal school service commission will start the second phase of counselling to appoint teachers in government-aided upper primary schools (Classes VI to VIII) on November 11, after the publication of a revised vacancy list.

The second phase of counselling, which will continue till November 26, involves the appointment of teachers in Bengali-medium schools and the bulk of the appointment will be made during this phase, said a commission official.

The first phase, which started on October 3 and resumed on October 24 after the Puja break, covers schools where the medium of instruction is not Bengali.

The commission chairperson said the second phase of counselling would stretch throughout November so the appointments could be made by the end of that month.

Although a Calcutta High Court division bench had told the commission to recruit teachers within eight weeks from August 28, an SSC official said they needed
more time as the Puja vacation came in the way and a fresh vacancy list had to be
published.

The commission needs to publish a fresh list of vacant posts because the list that was issued in early October had some posts that did not exist.

“We are in touch with the school education department so the revised vacancy list can be drawn up before the start of the counselling on November 11. The counselling will continue till November 26,” SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said.

An SSC official said they have received complaints about anomalies in at least 100 posts and decided to come up with a fresh list so the second phase could be error-free.

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

“We don’t want this to happen in the second phase. That might lead to litigation,” the official said.

The candidates who are being called for counselling wrote the recruitment exam — state-level selection test — eight years ago. A barrage of litigation alleging irregularities in the conduct of exams led to the delay in starting the counselling.

The court finally struck down the challenges.

“The commission does not want to risk any further delay in making the recruitments. So an error-free list is going to be readied,” an SSC official said.

Sushanta Ghosh, the president of the West Bengal Upper Primary Teaching
Job Aspirants’ Forum, said: “It is 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. The recruitment is happening after eight years and the commission should be careful so that such errors don’t recur.”

In all, 658 candidates have been called for around 1,000 vacant posts in the first phase of counselling. As many as 8,342 candidates will be called for the 13,000-odd posts in the second round.

Recruitment at the upper primary level marks the start of appointment at any level of the state government-run school education system in the last eight years.

Appointments at the primary, secondary and higher secondary levels are stuck because of litigation.