Amid protests, Nitish hints at hiring more school teachers, but warns ‘shirkers’

On the occasion, the CM also released an app for monitoring schools, distributed scholarships and incentives through direct benefit transfer (DBT) and announced a bag-less day for students of primary schools every Saturday.

Finance minister Vijay Kunar Choudhary, who earlier held the education portfolio, said Bihar was working on the ideals of Azad in the true sense by ensuring communal harmony and encouragement to education, especially girls’ education. Education minister Chandrashekhar chaired the function.

Meanwhile, candidates who have cleared TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) have been protesting in Bihar’s capital Patna for a week now, demanding that the state government start the seventh phase of recruitment for government school teachers. The first phase of recruitment began in 2006 and the sixth phase is currently underway.

“We will continue on our indefinite agitation till the notification is issued. We had hoped deputy chief minister Tejaswhi Prasad Yadav, who was in our support till last May, would be forthright and immediately announce the vacancies, but that has not happened. The education minister is also from his party RJD this time, unlike earlier when the department always remained with the JD-U,” says one of the teacher aspirants.