WBSSC job case: Despite extending deadline, number of applicants for fresh recruitment low

Kolkata, July 17 (IANS) With just four days left for the extended application deadline to end for West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC)’s fresh recruitment for teaching jobs, the total number of online applications has been extremely low compared to what it was in 2016 when the last recruitment of secondary and higher secondary teachers were done.

The fresh recruitment is happening because 25,753 school jobs were cancelled by the Supreme Court in April, all of whom were from the 2016 panel.

An insider from the state education department said that initially, the deadline for submitting only the application was midnight on July 14. However, the commission decided to increase the deadline till July 21, considering that the number of applications was less than five lakh as of midnight of July 13.

Now, with just four days left for the extended deadline of July 21 midnight to end, the total number of applicants is around six lakh. The number of applicants so far has been around one-fourth of the 22 lakh applications in 2016, when the last recruitment was done.

The fresh recruitment will be for a total of 35,726 assistant teachers, out of which 23,212 will be for the secondary section and the remaining 12,514 will be for the higher secondary section.

While officially, the state education department officials are tight-lipped over the possible reasons behind this low applicant interest, the “untainted” teachers of 2016 who also lost jobs along with the “tainted” ones feel that the cancellation of so many school jobs by the Supreme Court in April could be the reason for it.

“First of all, there had been massive corruption in the recruitment process, where many people got teaching jobs paying money. Secondly, even the ‘untainted’ candidates lost jobs along with ‘tainted’ ones because the state government or commission could not publish lists segregating the ‘untainted’ and ‘tainted' ones. Now, even the state government was holding the brief on behalf of ‘tainted’ candidates. All these developments are bound to make honest and hardworking aspiring teachers reluctant to participate in the recruitment process,” said Mehboob Mondal, a leading face of the movement by “untainted” teachers and an office-bearer of “Jogyo Shikshak-Shikshika Adhikar Mancha (Untainted Teachers’ Rights Forum)”, the umbrella body spearheading the movement on this issue.

--IANS

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