The School Service Commission (SSC) for Darjeeling has started functioning at a time when a controversy over teacher appointments in schools under the ambit of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) is raging in the hills.
The process of appointment of 313 teachers in the GTA region has been dragged to Calcutta High Court, primarily because there has been a lack of systematic appointment processes since 2003 in the Darjeeling hills.
The SSC for the hill region was revived by the state government in January this year after over two decades.
The six-member SSC for Darjeeling region, formed in January, was given an office at the Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan in Darjeeling.
“We are currently working hard to make the SSC for the hills relevant. We are presently processing the appointments for 19 teachers on the grounds of death-in-harness,” a source told The Telegraph.
Death-in-harness refers to government employees dying on duty, for which compensatory jobs are given to their next of kin.
Since 2012, hill candidates applying for teaching posts on grounds of death-in-harness cases have been facing difficulties in securing jobs.
Sources said that the job applications of these candidates were being forwarded to the School Service Commission (SSC) office in Calcutta through the GTA principal secretary.
“Six employees have been deputed at the office from the GTA (departments) but there is no permanent employee appointment as of now,” an official said. They do not come to the SSC office regularly. “We will call them as and when the workload increases,” said a source.
One of the major jobs of the SSC is to recruit teachers.
“The teachers' vacancy list is submitted by the district inspector of school when the central SSC (in Calcutta) asks for it. It is after this that our work comes. It ranges from selecting venues for the exams and interviews to finally handing over the appointment letters to selected candidates,” the source added.
The new recruitment process through the SSC has not yet started in the hills.
In 1997, the state government conducted the SSC exam to recruit teachers, which 182 candidates from the hills cleared.
The then hill body Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council did not allow the candidates to join work and demanded a separate hill zone for the DGHC.
In 1999, the state government formed a hill zone and an SSC exam was also held. Forty hill candidates passed this exam but the DGHC once again stalled their appointment and raised a fresh demand for handing over the SSC (hill zone) to the DGHC.
The state said a bill would be placed in the Assembly to hand over the SSC to the DGHC. The GNLF, in power then, refused to accept the SSC saying almost all hill schools were “linguistic minorities” outside the SSC’s ambit.
On September 5, 2003, the state government directed the secretary of SSC (hill region) to keep the office “under suspension” and asked the official “to lock the office and hand its custody to the district magistrate”.
The DGHC continued recruiting ad hoc teachers. Allegations of political nepotism in teaching appointments and paltry pay started doing the rounds. Many hill institutions appointed “voluntary teachers” without fixed pay. Over the years, jobs of ad hoc and voluntary teachers were regularised.
The 220-odd candidates who had cleared the two SSC exams landed jobs through a court order many years later.