The document verification process to prepare a list of candidates who will be called for interviews for the posts of secondary-level schoolteachers will start after March 8.

The school service commission (SSC) is currently busy with selection tests on March 1 and 8 to recruit non-teaching school staff. Thus, the document verification process will start after March 8, said an official.

The results of the selection test, held in September to shortlist candidates for secondary-level schoolteacher posts, were declared last November.

The commission, in December last year, released a list of around 40,000 candidates who will be called for interviews after the document verification process, which is yet to start.

“We are conducting the counselling process for the higher secondary level, following which letters of appointment are being issued. Then we will hold Group C and Group D selection tests on March 1 and March 8,” SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said. “So the document verification for secondary-level schoolteachers will start after March 8.”

The delay has left candidates worried. They wrote the test on September 7 and were included in the preliminary interview list in December.

The Supreme Court on April 3 last year terminated the jobs of 17,209 schoolteachers after the court found their recruitment process “vitiated” and “tainted beyond redemption”.

Among the sacked, the court on August 19 found 15,403 to be untainted. The apex court, however, said such candidates have to take the tests afresh, with a rider that the untainted would continue to get salaries until they managed to get back their jobs.

Mehboob Mandal, one of the untainted teachers who wrote the tests on September 7 and is now awaiting the start of the document verification process, said they are worried about the delay.

“The apex court had called us untainted and said ‘invalidation of such untainted appointments would lead to heartburn and anguish’. Still, we were made to write the tests. But if our interview is not held, how will we retain our jobs?” said Mandal.

Initially, the apex court said that the recruitment process must be done by December 31, 2025.

Later, it extended the deadline to August 31.

The SSC chairperson said they would complete the process on time this time.