The Patna high court on Monday directed the Bihar vigilance department to probe into the appointment of nearly 40,000 teachers who allegedly used fake degree and certificates to get jobs in government primary and middle schools and submit the report within four weeks.
A division bench of the court of chief justice L Narasimha Reddy directed the director of state vigilance to probe into the case related to the appointment of teachers on fake degree and forged certificates in government schools after hearing the petition of one Ranjit Pandit.
"Unsatisfied by the state government's reply on action taken report in the case, the court has taken judicial note of it and expressed serious concern. The court directed the director of state vigilance to probe into it and submit a report within four weeks," the petitioner’s lawyer, Dinu Kumar said.
Kumar said that state government's lawyer informed the court that cases have been lodged against some teachers, who used fake degree to get jobs in government schools and action has been taken against some of them.
He said that court has asked the director of state vigilance to complete the verification of degree and certificates of teachers recruited by the state government from 2006 till date. “In view of the next Bihar assembly polls later this year, the state government was not taking action against the teachers, who used fake degree to get jobs.”
Last week, the court directed principal secretary, education, to file an action taken report in the case. After that the state education department asked all the 38 districts to submit within a month degrees of nearly 4,30,000 teachers for verification.
Earlier, the state government has admitted that it recruited nearly 3 lakh contract teachers without verifying their educational and professional degrees.
Last year, a petition was filed in the high court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the recruitment of 40,000 teachers who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get jobs in government school.
The petitioner said he has collected documents as evidence through Right to Information queries to prove that thousands of teachers used forged degrees to get jobs in government schools in Bihar.
