BJD MP Accuses Dharmendra Pradhan Of Misleading People On Jr Teacher Recruitment In Odisha

Bhubanweswar: BJD MP Sasmit Patra on Wednesday lashed out at Union Education Minister over the issue of recruitment of junior teachers in Odisha and accused him of trying to mislead people.

The Rajya Sabha member in a post on X said that EdCIL (India), a “Miniratna” Central PSE, has clarified everything on junior teachers’ recruitment in the state. The tweet by Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) further clarifies it well, he said.

“However, an informal, unsigned Odia press release (probably by Dharmendra Pradhan’s IT cell?) has been circulated to mislead and falsify the truth. Doing politics and by sensationalizing false news in a sensitive issue like teachers’ recruitment is shocking and shows the mindset to grab political mileage by any means,” Patra claimed.

Educational Consultants India Limited (EdCIL), the public sector undertaking (PSU) under the Ministry of Education was roped in by the School and Mass Education department’s OSEPA to conduct recruitment of 20,000 junior teachers, has denied allegations of irregularities in the process.

In a release, EdCIL on Tuesday claimed it had signed an MoU with OSEPA for conducting the computer-based test (CBT) on August 22 last year for the recruitment of junior teachers. As per the rules, conditions and criteria mentioned in the MoU, the merit list was prepared and given to the OSEPA. All complaints were resolved by the responsive care management as per the procedures laid down by OSEPA, it stated.

After the CBT examination, EdCIL prepared the examination results based on the guidelines mentioned in the August 22 resolution and gave them to the authorised appointing officers of OSEPA, it further said. The combined list and merit list were given to OSEPA on January 13 and 15 respectively by EdCIL.

The PSU clarified there are problems in the recruitment of junior teachers on the part of OSEPA and not EdCIL.

As per reports, OSEPA had published the draft merit list of 18,805 candidates and fixed January 20 and 21 for verification of documents. Following this, a large number of aspirants had last week alleged that the merit list published by OSEPA was done without announcing the cut-off mark. They also alleged that there were several anomalies in the issue of admit cards some of which had fake names and photos on them.

Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had targeted the Odisha government for alleged irregularities in the recruitment process, while BJD had clarified that the recruitment is being carried out by EdCI.