Junior teacher aspirants allege irregularities, OSEPA denies

BHUBANESWAR : Alleging irregularities in junior teacher recruitment, hundreds of aspirants on Thursday staged protest in the city, prompting the Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) to issue a clarification.

The aspirants, who gathered in front of the OSEPA office, alleged the merit list for recruitment to 20,000 Junior Teacher (schematic) posts published by OSEPA was done without announcing the cut-off mark. Besides, they alleged that there were several anomalies in issue of admit card some of which had fake names and photos on them.

OSEPA authorities in their clarification, however, said the 20,000 posts were advertised in different categories and the draft merit list was published for 18,788 post taking into account availability of candidates in different categories. They further said utmost transparency was followed in conduct of the exams in CBT mode and the cut-off mark will be released only after the recruitment process ends.

Besides, the authorities said mere admit card issuance was not an assurance for entry of the candidates to the exam hall. They said the admit cards were automatically generated on the basis of information submitted by the applicants and the candidates were allowed to sit for the exams only after verification of name, photos and through biometric attendance.