Bhubaneswar: Hundreds of aspiring teachers staged a protest in front of the office of the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (Opepa) against their "faulty recruitment policy".

They demanded state-wide posting of new candidates on the basis of marks instead of district-wise preference while recruiting candidates for 14,087 Sikshya Sahayak vacancies.

"It was written in the notice that recruitment will be done solely on the basis of merit. But, this system is helping us in no way. A student who has scored 168 marks is posted instead of a student who has scored 240," said a protesting candidate.

The protesters further threatened to move Orissa High Court if the government failed to put a stay order on the recruitment. The aspirants have also demanded to make the merit list of the examination public.

In another development, Opepa said that recruitment policy was already on and was being done in accordance with their policy.

"Only one merit list has been published which is also the draft. We will see what can be done to ensure that there are no mistakes while doing correction of papers," said Opepa director Bhupinder S. Punia.