More than 1,000 candidates have applied within the first 24 hours since the application link to appoint school teachers went live on the website of the school service commission late on Monday, an official of the commission said on Tuesday.
More than 10,000 candidates have registered on the commission’s application link, activated at 10.30pm on Monday.
This is the first time in the past nine years that the school service commission (SSC) has initiated a process to appoint school teachers. A barrage of litigations had so far halted the recruitment process.
An official of the SSC said the process to submit application forms would continue without any break till July 14, and Calcutta High Court’s order on staying a state government’s notification on OBC reservation in education and jobs would not come in the way of the continuance of the process.
“The commission is allowing a candidate to register on the link so they can get conversant with FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) before applying. So out of the 10,000-odd registered candidates, more than 1,000 candidates have applied upon making the payment. We are expecting the pace of applications to pick up as the day progresses,” the official said.
“Since the in-service teachers will be awarded 10 marks as prior teaching experience in the 100-mark selection test, the in-service teachers are being told to mention the year of their joining the school,” the official said.
The recruitment rules that the state government uploaded on May 30 state that in-service teachers will get two marks against each year of service.
The in-service teachers, particularly those who had been recruited based on a selection test held in 2016 by the commission and had their jobs terminated by the Supreme Court on April 3, have to take part in the fresh recruitment process if they are to continue their jobs beyond December 31.
The apex court, in a moderated order on April 17, while allowing teachers who have
been found to be not specifically tainted to return to schools till December and draw salary till then, said those teachers have to participate in a fresh recruitment exercise to keep their jobs alive beyond December.
The exercise will end on July 14; however, the deadline can be extended by a week.
Lubana Parvin, a waitlisted candidate from the 2016 panel who could not secure an appointment despite cracking the State Level Selection Test in 2016 because of the alleged illegalities in the recruitment process, said she visited the application link on the commission’s website on Tuesday.
“I have logged on to the link on the commission’s website just to get an idea about the application process. I have not yet registered. I am looking forward to submitting the application forms by the end of June,” said Lubana Parvin.
“I want to wait for some days before applying as I want to see whether Calcutta High Court’s interim order staying the notification on OBC reservation will have any impact on the admission process.”
On Monday, the commission launched the application process more than five hours after the scheduled launch time.
A commission official explained why the start of the admission process was delayed.
“The commission has not conducted any recruitment exercise over the past nine years. The capacity of our server got depleted. We hired a server from the state data centre so we could work. But that was not up to the mark. Then we rented a server from a private facility. Then the system had to be made compatible with the software and ready for the payment gateway. All these took longer than expected,” a source in the commission said.
When contacted, SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumder declined to comment.
Education minister Bratya Basu said: “We are hopeful that a large number of candidates will apply”.
The dates of the selection tests have been tentatively fixed in the first week of September.
“The state government and the SSC have filed petitions seeking reviews of the Supreme Court’s sack order. The petitions are likely to be taken up in July once the Supreme Court resumes on July 15, following the end of the summer vacation. The dates of the selection tests would be announced following what the Supreme Court says,” said an SSC official.