The West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) published a fresh list of vacant posts on Friday to appoint teachers at the upper primary level (classes VI to VIII) in government-aided schools, as the previous list published last month contained some non-existent posts.

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

Following that many candidates who had received recommendation letters from the commission faced difficulty in joining.

A notice issued by the commission’s secretary on Friday evening says: “This is to inform all concerned that some vacancies uploaded on our website on 01.10.24 were later detected to be incorrect. The correct vacancies (all related to Bengali medium schools for different subjects for which counselling will commence on and from 11.11.24) as received from the competent authority are hereby uploaded for information and offered for counselling.”

Commission chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said they received complaints about some posts on various grounds across the districts.

The corrected list has been published ahead of the start of the second round of counselling on November 11 for the Bengali medium schools.

“On Friday, we only published the list containing posts against which we received complaints. This list contains details of 756posts district-wise. We had to correct the maximum number of names in Birbhum district,” said chairperson Majumdar.

A commission official said some of the candidates selected during the previous round of counselling found that the posts for which they had been given appointment letters did not exist.

The 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.

When the candidate contacted the head of the school in Kalchini, the headmaster told him that there was no vacant post in history.

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

The corrected list has been published in consultation with the school education department.

Chairperson Majumdar said the maximum number of complaints was about the non-existence of posts against which the candidates had been recommended.

“The bulk of the appointments will be made during this phase for the Bengali medium schools. So, we had to be sure about the list. As the complaints started pouring in during the first phase of counselling, the commission also started receiving complaints from its sources,” said a commission official.

The first phase of counselling which started on October 3 and continued till October 29 after the Puja break, covered schools where the medium of instruction is not Bengali.

In all, 658 candidates had 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.

“The instances of incorrect appointment in the first round of counselling earned the council a bad name, considering that the recruitment had started nine years after the candidates had written the state-level selection test. The recruitment could start only after the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court allowed the appointment dismissing the petitions seeking to stay the recruitment. We are committed to carrying out a fair recruitment. So, steps have been taken to correct the list,” an official said.

Susanta Ghosh, the president of the West Bengal Upper Primary Teaching Job Aspirants’ Forum, said: “We hope the commission has been able to come up with a flawless list.... We have been waiting to get recruited for years”