According to an official source on July 17, over 5 lakh candidates have so far applied for 35,726 assistant teacher posts in state-run and state-aided schools in West Bengal.

An online application portal was launched on June 16 to facilitate the process, with the original July 14 deadline getting extended to July 21.

The number of applicants is “5 lakh-plus already. We are expecting the figure to go up,” Chairman of the West Bengal School Service Commission Siddhartha Majumdar told media sources.

On May 30, the WBSSC had issued a notification for recruitment of 35,726 assistant teachers in Classes 9-12 in state-aided and state-run schools, in adherence to a Supreme Court directive.

The top court had asked the state government to file a compliance affidavit on the initiation of the recruitment process on or before May 31.

In April, the Supreme Court had scrapped the entire 2016 State Level Selection Test (SLST) recruitment panel, and annulled 25,753 appointments of teachers of Classes 9-12 as well as Group C and Group D staff.

In the 2016 SSC recruitment tests, over 3 lakh candidates had applied for teaching jobs, another WBSSC official said.

After the apex court’s April order, the WBSSC had identified 15,403 out of 17,206 teachers as “not found to be specifically tainted”, allowing them to continue receiving salaries until December. The remaining 1,804 teachers have been barred from returning to schools.

Referring to the April 3 verdict of the top court and the subsequent order on April 17, the WBSSC had earlier said, “The commission and the government of West Bengal have already applied for review of the said judgment and order, and this exercise (fresh recruitment) is strictly subject to the outcome of the review petition and guidelines of the Hon’ble court to be followed by the commission and the government.”

Earlier this month, the Calcutta High Court dismissed appeals by the WBSSC and the state government to allow “ineligible” candidates to participate in the new recruitment process.

Reacting to the fresh application process, ‘Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum’ office-bearer Chinmoy Mondal said, “We have nothing to say about the number of applicants. All we can say is those who had passed the 2016 exams cannot sit with their students who have graduated, done masters and now are aspiring to be teachers.”

“After the Supreme Court order, the commission and the education department should not have undertaken the process in such a hurry, and instead, could have worked on presenting a water-tight case for ‘untainted teachers’ before the apex court,” Mondal said.

He added that since the matter is pending before the Supreme Court, the state government should have come up with a verifiable list of “untainted” teachers or made the OMR sheets public.

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