PATNA, Sept. 10 -- Thousands of aspirants of Teachers' Recruitmebt Examination (TRE-4) on Tuesday vented their ire on the streets, demanding increase in the number of seats from 27,000, as announced by the Bihar government. The protesting aspirants said that there was earlier projection for around one lakh seats, but now the number has been dropped to just 27,000. The police had to use water cannons on the roads and resort to lathicharge at Patna's heart, Dak Bungalow crossing, to control the mob. "We have detained some of the protestors, as they did not vacate the area despite announcements and tried to move towards the prohibited area," said a police officer. Education minister Sunil Kumar, however, said that the government would also conduct TRE-5 after TRE-4, as already announced by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. "We will try to address their grievances, but the aspirants should not get misled. There will be TRE-5 also and it is a continuous process. For TRE-4 we have decided on 27,000 seats after assessing existing vacancies, but this is not the last recruitment opportunity as teachers," he added. The minister said that the aspirants should know that the Nitish government has already recruited 2.5-lakh teachers and 32,000 headmasters and head teachers through the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) and it would continue. "We have also sent the requisition for special teachers. This is an ongoing process. Still, we will hear the grievances of the aspirants and try to address them," he added. However, the aspirants are jittery about the prospect post-election and feel that their best chance is to make the government accede to their demands ahead of the polls, as it happened in the case of Secondary Teachers' Eligibility Test (STET). On September 2, the government altered its own decision in the wake of growing demand and protests, and announced that STET, which got delayed, would be held in October prior to TRE-4, which would now be held after polls in December. Chief minister Nitish Kumar had in July directed the education department to identify teachers' vacancies at the earliest to intitate the process for holding TRE-4, with 35% reservation for native woman candidates. Since 2020, the education department has seen five education ministers and an equal number of additional chief secretaries and that has had an impact on the policy consistency in one of the crucial departments that consumes over 20% of the state budget and manages the largest workforce of teachers and employees. "The problem with the government is that due to frequent change of guards in the education department, which also led to quick change in official-centric policies with regard to transfer, posting and recruitment, there is no clear picture regarding vacancies and actual requirement. Everything remains in a fluid state," admitted an expert of school education, who did not want to be quoted....