Altogether 17 qualified candidates for the post of high school teachers of Jharkhand government-run schools, who have been waiting for their appointment since the last 18 months, staged a day-long dharna and demonstration outside the office of Dhanbad district education officer, Prabha Xess on Monday.

The protestors shouted slogans as part of their agitation and demanded their immediate appointment, failing which they threatened to stage a massive protest at the district headquarters.

Dhanbad MLA, Raj Sinha, who also reached at the site to lend support to the protesting teachers and also demanded completion of their appointment.

Talking to Telegraph Online on Monday at the Dharna site, Sunita Kumari, one of the candidates blamed the former district education officer of Dhanbad, Alka Jaiswal for the entire mess.

Notably, the 17 teachers who had applied against the state level recruitment notification of 2016 and got qualified after appearing in the exam, titled Jharkhand Trained Graduate Teachers exam conducted by Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission.

Though the appointment to other teachers have been provided, these 17 teachers could not be appointed as the subject for which they applied for was not their honours subject and rather a subsidiary paper at the graduation level.

“The then district education officer, Alka Jaiswal called us for providing appointment letters on July 17, 2019, but she later refused to provide the same claiming that she had sought guidelines from the state’s higher, technical education and skill development department and will provide an appointment only after receiving guidelines from the higher-ups,” said Kumari.

“We have been waiting for the guidelines for more than 18 months finally compelling us to resort to the agitation path today,” stated Kumari and claimed that while other teachers from 23 districts of the state with a similar condition of having the subject for which they qualified being their subsidiary subject at the graduation level have been provided appointment while in Dhanbad they are being denied appointment and it is none of their fault.

“Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission while inviting the application for the subject wise teachers’ appointment never put the pre-condition in the notification. They never mention that the candidate can’t apply for the subject if that subject is not their honours subject,” claimed another agitator requesting anonymity and added that when the recruitment authority conducted the exam and also published their results there is no logic of denying them an appointment.

District education officer, Prabha Xess who met the agitators said, “We will sort out the issue within a month and since a guideline had been sought in the matter by my predecessor, Alka Jaiswal, we will wait for some time and then again, if necessary, will send a reminder to the department again and solve the issue.”