Education authorities in Uttar Pradesh were left baffled when one of the applicants for the post of primary school teacher was 'Osama Bin Laden' whose father's name was mentioned as 'Bill Clinton'. The applicant hails from Agra.
With a marvellous academic record in all exams, another candidate with the name 'Jai Sri Ram' also applied for the job. He is incidentally the son of 'Dashrath' from Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya.
Another candidate with the name 'Farji', which means fake, has also applied. He has mentioned his father's name as 'Farji Singh'.
These are the names of some of the candidates who have been shortlisted in the first list for the primary teachers' job by the state's basic education department's recruitment drive.
The list does not end there as a candidate 'Abcdefgh' who is son of Xyz is also an aspirant for the teachers' job.
The authorities have allotted registration number for every single candidate and have issued counselling letters to their 'fake' address.
There were around 72,825 vacancies for the primary school teacher post which was announced district wise. Around 70 lakh applicants from over 20 districts applied for the vacancy through online.
Over 60 percent of applicants were considered fake and believed to have come up with false name, father's name, address and marks among many others. While screening the applications, many applicants were seen to have secured marks between 95 and 100 percent from Class X to B.Ed.
After the matter came to light, Waseem Ahmad, minister of state for basic education, said that the errors will be sort out by the department.
"This system of receiving online applications and sorting it out by software was meant for observing complete transparency," Daily mail quoted him as saying. "Maybe there are some problems but they will be sorted out in coming days," he added.
A senior employee of the department complained that only fake applicants could be called for first round of counselling as they 'scored' above 95 percent."Obviously such candidates will not turn up. But who will be answerable for the money and resources spent on short listing the applicants?" he said.
"It would have been better if the department had made it mandatory for the applicants to enclose all their educational certificates," he added.
Claiming that the preparation of final merit list of the candidate was still in process, Sanjay Sinha, secretary of the basic education board assured that fake names will be removed during the final counselling and genuine candidates in the list will be given preference.
The application was available online and the software could not detect fake applicants. Also, the software could not discard forms that were filled by the same candidate twice. As a result two registration numbers were issued to the same candidate.
