Mita Mukherjee
The West Bengal government has restarted the process of appointing over 2000 assistant professors in state-aided colleges after keeping the recruitment drive in abeyance for nearly a year following a court case.
The West Bengal College Service Commission (WBCSC), the state government-controlled agency that recruits teachers for state-aided colleges, had published an advertisement in December 2020, inviting applications from eligible candidates to fill the vacancies created by retirement of teachers, creation of new teaching posts and non-availability of suitable candidates in the last recruitment drive undertaken by the commission.
Soon after the publication of the advertisement, a group of aspiring teachers who were shortlisted by the commission in 2018 after publication of a similar advertisement in that year but finally failed to get selected had filed a case in Calcutta High Court demanding cancellation of the 2020 advertisement. The recruitment process had to be kept in abeyance by the commission because of the court case.
On December 14 this year, the court passed an order dismissing the prayer of the petitionersent citing a rule of the commission, which states that a panel of shortlisted candidates would remain valid for not more than a year. In this case the petitioners belonged to the panel prepared by the commission on the basis of the 2018 advertisement.
Dipak Kar, chairman of WBCSC said, the commission has already received the court order and the commission was getting ready to restart the recruitment process.
The ruling Trinamool Congress government had initiated the recruitment drive in last December apparently to highlight the government’s success in creating job opportunities for the educated youths in Bengal before the Assembly elections which were conducted in April-May this year.
The court order brought relief to the state government because even though the Trinamool Congress returned to power with a landslide victory, the government faced criticism after the polls for not fulfilling the promise made by it before the elections that it would appoint around 2000 college teachers.
According to Kar, the WBCSC chairman, nearly 33,000 candidates have applied for the 2000 vacant posts of assistant professors in response to the advertisement published by the commission in December 2020.
The WBCSC recruits teachers for around 500 state-aided colleges in as many as 52 subjects.
But this time the commission will recruit teachers in 45 subjects, Kar said.
The commission has asked the colleges to prepare the list of vacancies in their respective institutions and send it to the commission as early as possible, said Kar.
There are around 15,000 sanctioned teaching posts in the colleges and five to ten per cent fall vacant because of retirement.
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Posted in News, States
