Official sources in the HRD department said the local dailies widely reported that applicants used fake degrees to apply for teachers jobs. Acting on the same, the government found the reports true and identified illegal institutions issuing fake degrees and blacklisted them.

Singh said some of the blacklisted institutions belong to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Punjab. The degrees issued by these institutions were neither recognised by the state government nor the National Council of Teachers Education.

'The government has circulated a list of such blacklisted institutions to all district level officials and directed them to immediately forward it to officials involved in recruitment of teachers at sub-division, block and panchayat level for scanning the applications,' he said.

An HRD department official said its 9,000 recruitment centres across the state received more than 10 million applications for 93,000 posts of teachers. He said absence of industries and other business opportunities forced young men and women in Bihar to apply for jobs in government-run schools.

A teacher recruitment drive started two years ago in Bihar to recruit more than 200,000 teachers in various schools across the state. In the first phase of the drive, 136,000 teachers were recruited while in the second phase 80,000 primary teachers and 12,000 secondary and higher secondary teachers were recruited.

Source : indiaenews