The state secondary education board has initiated the police verification process to appoint 168 teachers at the Plus II level in the first phase.

The process marks the resumption of teacher appointments at government-aided schools after a 10-year gap.

After receiving the letters of recommendation from the school service commission (SSC), the board wrote to police superintendents across 23 districts and the six police commissionerates to complete verifications at the earliest.

The SSC completed the counselling of 168 candidates last month.

The commission started counselling of another 3,500 candidates at the Plus II level on Tuesday.

An education department official said the commission is unlikely to complete the recruitment of 12,445 candidates at the higher secondary level by March 31, in keeping with a deadline the commission submitted before the Supreme Court.

As per the plan, after the recruitment process is finalised by March 31, the counselling process to identify candidates for the appointment of 25,314 secondary level (Classes IX and X) teachers is expected to begin in late March. The commission informed the Supreme Court in December that this would take another four months.

The commission cited a wave of court cases challenging the recruitment rules as one of the hurdles to completing recruitments on time.

The commission submitted the deadline while appealing for an extension of the appointment window last December.

Subrata Ghosh, the board secretary, said the police verification process started after the SSC sent a list of recommended candidates.

“The required procedures are being followed,” said Ghosh.

The process for the medical verification of the recommended candidates has also started, said an SSC official.

The official said that although they are running behind schedule at the higher secondary level, they hope to complete the entire process for both secondary and higher secondary levels by August 31, the fresh deadline the Supreme Court set for the commission last December.

The Supreme Court on December 18 extended the deadline for the schoolteacher recruitment process in Bengal from December 31 to August 31 next year, paving the way for the thousands of “untainted” candidates to continue service for another eight months.

“We had to hold selection tests for the appointment of non-teaching staff at the secondary and higher secondary levels of the government-aided schools on March 1 and March 8. Around 15 lakh candidates took the test. This delayed the recruitment process of teachers at the higher secondary level,” the official said.

On April 3, the apex court terminated the jobs of 17,209 teachers and 8,544 non-teaching staff because of a faulty recruitment process.

On April 17, the apex court said those not found “specifically tainted” (later identified as untainted) would be allowed to continue to work as teachers until December 31, 2025.

The deadline has been further extended to August 31, 2026.