Patna: The appointment of assistant professors by the Bihar State University Service Commission (BSUSC) invariably turns out to be an endless exercise due to controversies and litigations surrounding it as a routine. This time also, it is no different.
The present round of recruitment has been on since 2020 and continuing. Before that, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) had advertised 3,364 vacancies of assistant professors in 2014, nearly 17 years after the previous advertisement in 1997, and the interview process got underway in 2015 and stretched up to 2020 before the BSUSC was revived.
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Barely a fortnight after the commission had to cancel the interview scheduled on January 15-16 for the subjects Ancient Indian History & Archeology/Culture/Asian Studies till further orders in the light of the Patna High Court order, another irregularity has surfaced. This time it is over arbitrary experience certificates, which carries vital 10 marks weightage in the final selection process.
Some of the experience certificates furnished by the candidates have already been found forged, but this has raised a big question mark over others as well. For the teaching experience certificates, the concerned principal of the college and the registrar of the university are the competent issuing authority.
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But what has surfaced is that many candidates for the experience certificates without actually having experience of teaching have passed the commission’s scrutiny due to the official seal and signature of the competent authorities on the certificate and in many cases the aspirants got the benefit of doubt.
After detection of a few cases and the hint of more, BSUSC chairman Girish Choudhary brought it to the notice of the education department and later all the universities were written to get down to strict scrutiny of experience certificates before confirming the services of the candidates.
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Last month, the commission had to cancel the interview process for some subjects after stern posturing from the court on the petitioners’ plea “if the Commission, after commencement of the recruitment process, can change the eligibility criteria midway by allowing 11 additional subjects based on the report of three members expert committee dated January 1, 2024, in addition to three subjects”.
The appointment process of the commission has always been caught in legal wrangles in Bihar and often stretches to several years. The situation is no different this time. The commission also had to quash the appointment of a candidate in sociology after discrepancies were highlighted by several candidates and were found to be true. They had also written to the Governor, Chief Minister, Education Minister and others, demanding cancellation of the result.
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In their petition, they also raised questions over the marks obtained for Ph.D, research etc. other petitions have also been filed in the court challenging the award of marks for research and Ph.D.
For only one post in the Rural Studies subject also, the result had to be amended after the HC order. A backward class candidate in the unreserved category, Shashi Gupta was selected almost two years after the result. She had challenged the process citing anomalies.
The single-judge bench of Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma had in December 2022 stayed the appointment of assistant professors due to ambiguity on reservation roster and issue of adjusting backlog vacancies. The stay was lifted in April 2024.
The commission has advertised 4,638 vacancies of assistant professors in 52 subjects on September 23, 2020. The announcement was made just before the state assembly elections.
Bihar legislature had passed the Bihar state university service commission Act in 2017 to vest the power of recruitment back in the commission, which was earlier dissolved in 2007. Before the Lok Sabha elections, the State government had constituted the commission in February 2019 with Rajvardhan Azad as the chairman.
