Amid reports of aspirants furnishing forged certificates, the deadline for verification of all the documents of some 16,000 primary teachers appointed last year ended on Thursday. The School Education and literacy department, however, was not in a position to divulge the statistics of the certificates that were found to be fake. Department Secretary Aradhana Patnaik hinted that most of the reports received from districts so far presented a good picture.
The Secretary said that 72,000-odd para teachers’ document verification was also going on side by side. She said that termination of teachers and process of lodging FIR against those working on fake degrees was being carried out and some 500 para-teachers were terminated by now. She said that the department has completed verification of some 25,000 para teachers so far.
“Whereas the question of last year appointments of some 16,000 regular teachers is concerned, I can only say that we have received reports from almost all the districts by now. We hope to get all the data before deadline ends on Friday. Though we have come across just a few fake certificates in Dhanbad, or may be one or two other districts as well. But overall report appears fine and we need not worry much,” said Patnaik.
The curse of having not many BEd Colleges in State has turned into boon in identifying fake certificates in regular teachers’ case. “Jharkhand doesn’t have too many BEd Colleges. So, the officials zeroed in on a few such BEd Colleges in neighbouring States, which were found to have issued a BEd degree to lot many teachers. Then, the teachers coming from region where kingpin of fake document procurer Ayodhya Pandey said to have resided and issued degrees from were also on scanner,” said Patnaik. She also strongly ruled out any loophole in verification process saying that it was not at all easy on practical ground.
“Appointments of para teachers were done on their Intermediate degrees, and procuring a fake matriculation or Intermediate degree is easier keeping in mind whatever had been going on in neighbouring State since years. But getting a fake BEd degree is little difficult. So, we hope situation is not at all as worse in case of 16,000 regular teachers as in case of 72,000 para teachers,” said Patnaik.