Women instructors who were citizens of Uttar Pradesh and belonged to the general category were discovered to have received 5% bonus marks during the selection process, in violation of departmental regulations.
In the Aurangabad district of Bihar, 46 resident women teachers from Uttar Pradesh (UP) were dismissed from their positions due to receiving grace marks during the selection process for the Bihar Public Service Commission’s (BPSC) teacher recruitment in 2023, which was against the rules.
According to Daya Shankar Singh, the district program officer (establishment), the women teachers, who were found to have received 5% grace marks during selection despite not following departmental guidelines, were women teachers from the general category who lived in various districts in Uttar Pradesh.
It was made quite plain in the BPSC teacher recruitment announcement no. 27/2023 that passing the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) with a score of 60% was required in order to be considered for the position. The only applicants from Bihar who received a 5% grace in the TET percentage were women, SC/ST, and OBC candidates.
However, the UP-resident applicants were chosen against the rules based on the 5% grace mark. The candidates filed a writ suit in the Patna High Court after certain departmental officials discovered the mistake and refused to let the chosen applicants take up their positions in a district in north Bihar.
Following the high court’s denial of interference in the recruitment process, the director of education for Bihar wrote a letter on May 15 stating that candidates from states other than Bihar were not eligible for the 5% grace mark.
Teachers who acknowledged they had not received the required 60% of the possible points on the TET to be eligible to recruit candidates from outside the state were served with show-cause notices. According to DPO Singh, the instructors’ appointment was canceled, and they were fired since their justification was insufficient, and they did not meet the requirements.
“It was an error on the part of the officials to pass these candidates with grace marks in violation of the law. A high-level investigation is required to identify the network influencing the future of underprivileged jobless girls, a top official stated on the condition of anonymity.