After the postal and cooperative departments, the fake certificate racket in Bolangir seems to have hit the Education Department.
It has been alleged that a couple from Paika Samara village under Saintala police station in Bolangir district has obtained teacher jobs in government schools by producing fake certificates.
The fact came to the limelight through a Right to Information (RTI) application. As per the information obtained through the RTI plea, it has been revealed that the husband has passed BA from Kamraj University in Tamil Nadu in 2011. Again it has been revealed that he has cleared his B.Ed from Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Uttar Pradesh the following year. Now, questions are being raised as to how he completed B.Ed in just one year? Moreover, his wife has also got the teacher job by producing fake B.Ed certificate from Annamalai University in an identical manner.
RTI activists in the area have filed a complaint against the couple before Bolangir SP with the allegations that they have got teacher job by producing fake certificates.
Education Department has been pressed into action mode after the incident came to the fore. The department has started a process to prepare the list of all the teachers who have got jobs in different government schools in the last three years. As per the department sources, around 350 to 400 teachers have obtained jobs by producing certificates from different universities outside the State. A special team will visit those universities soon to check the authenticity of those certificates.
(Reported by Manoranjan Joshi)