Bhubaneswar: Responding to reports about fraudulent appointment of teachers in various schools across the state under the Ujjwal scheme, the Orissa government Thursday ordered a Crime Branch probe to fix the guilty. As per reports, a private agency by name Diligence Learning-Focused Society (DLFS) had facilitated appointments of several teachers in schools by sending forged letters of the School and Mass Education joint secretary D Pradhan to the district education officers (DEOs).
“This has come to our notice and I have asked our S&ME secretary Ranjana Chopra to refer the case to the Crime Branch,” said school and mass education (S&ME) minister Badri Narayan Patra. “We don’t recognise DLFS. We have no idea as to whether it exists or not. We had not signed any MoU with the agency in relation to the Ujjwal programme or on engagement or appointment of teachers,” Chopra told the media here. The Ujjwal programme is being implemented through department officers, and no external agency was involved, she stressed.
“However, it has come to our notice that a fake organisation is taking advantage of the ignorance of people and acting in objectionable ways. We have called for a departmental inquiry immediately, and now it has been decided to refer the matter to the Crime Branch for a more detailed investigation,” Chopra said.
The matter came to fore after the authorities at many schools started suspecting the authenticity of the letters from Pradhan on teachers’ appointment and apprised the department about this, besides seeking a clarification. A probe by the department showed that DLFS wasn’t in any way authorised by the government for any role in the appointment of teachers.
Once the matter became public in what amounts to a scam in teacher appointments, the S&ME department directed DEOs to ask the concerned schools not to allow these teachers take classes. Money had changed hands.
“The official of the company had demanded `50,000 while I had paid him `20,000 to get a teacher job,” said Uttam Behera, one of the many victims of the scam from Rayagada district.
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