Jharkhand new teachers spell trouble for CM

A fortnight after the Jharkhand government received a pat on the back from the NDA leadership for providing jobs to more than 9,000 trained ...

A fortnight after the Jharkhand government received a pat on the back from the NDA leadership for providing jobs to more than 9,000 trained teachers in the state, Chief Minister Arjun Munda is drawing flak for having rushed the announcement. The teachers hadn’t been issued their appointment letters and now many of them are under scanner for having allegedly faked their degrees.

The issue came to light when the Human Resource Department started verifying the certificates of the selected candidates for issuing them appointment letters; most of them failed to turn up.

On November 14, 9,535 candidates had cleared the test conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission. The next day, at the state’s third establishment function, BJP president Venkaiah Naidu lauded the CM’s role in providing jobs to these teachers. Even Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar and Union Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Digvijay Singh praised Munda.

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But in Garhwa district alone, 12 such cases have come up. In Ranchi, Dhanbad, Chaibasa and Jamtara, the department has not been able to issue letters as many candidates didn’t turn up.

“We suspect a number of them submitted fake certificates and are not coming out for verification now for fear of getting caught,’’ said a senior HRD official. Passing the buck, HRD Director Satyadeo Singh said: ‘‘We had directed the district collectors to examine the bona fides of the candidates minutely.’’

JPSC Additional Secretary Ram Prasad admitted several candidates had fake degrees. ‘‘The institutions they mention are neither approved by their state governments nor by a UGC-recognised university. The following institutions — Sister Nivedita College, All India Correspondence Coaching Society, Dr B.C. Roy College of Education, (all Kolkata), Shiksha Visharad, Allahabad, and Ali-Va-e-Qaamel Jamia, Aligarh, are all fake.’’