Patna High Court directs the vigilance to verify the degree of teachers
19 May, 2015
A division bench headed by Chief Justice L. Narasimha Reddy of the Patna High Court ordered directed the director of Bihar vigilance department to investigate the charge of use of fake degree certificates and submit an investigation report within four weeks. In his petition to the High Court, Ranjit Pandit had alleged that during the recruitment of nearly 40,000 government teachers, many used fake degree certificates to get the jobs. His advocate contended that the state government was not taking action against the teachers, who used fake degrees to get jobs, due to the impending Bihar assembly polls later this year. The court order is in relation to all the teachers’ recruitment in the state from 2006 onwards for which the state vigilance is expected to complete the verification of degrees and certificates of those recruited. Earlier, the High Court had directed the Principal Secretary (Education) to file an action taken report in the matter. The state education department in turn asked all the 38 district administrations to a verification report of 430,000 teachers in a month.
The state government of Bihar had admitted that the recruitment of about three lakh contract teachers was done in the state without any verification of their educational and professional degrees. The petitioner claimed that he has collected evidence that using Right to Information (RTI) Act which shows that forged degrees was used by many to get jobs in government schools in Bihar. The petition was filed in the High Court in 2014 seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the recruitment.