Kolkata, Jan. 9 -- The West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) has set January 21 as the deadline to publish the final merit panel for the recruitment of Class 11-12 teachers, with counselling likely to begin by the end of the month, officials said on Friday.

The timeline follows the completion of interviews on January 8 for 49 candidates who were allowed to appear after a Calcutta High Court order permitted them to update their category status. The candidates were shortlisted through a special document verification exercise conducted on December 30 for 154 applicants. Of the 78 candidates who appeared for verification, 49 met the subject-wise cut-off marks required for the interview-cum-lecture demonstration, and all attended the interview, officials said

Senior Commission officials said the preparation of the final merit panel would take around 10 days once interview marks and other assessment components are entered and verified. With a series of holidays beginning on January 22, the commission has fixed January 21 as its internal deadline to complete and publish the panel.

The recruitment process covers 12,445 vacancies at the higher secondary level. The 60-mark written examination was held on September 14. Of the 2,46,543 registered candidates, 2,29,606 appeared. Results were announced on November 7, followed by the publication of the preliminary interview list on November 15.

Document verification for all 35 subjects was conducted between November 18 and December 4. Interviews began for subjects whose verification concluded early, starting with Bengali and English on September 26, and concluded with the final set of 49 candidates. Counselling for Class 11-12 recruitment will be conducted centrally and is expected to begin by the end of the month, the commission said.

Officials also indicated that verification for the recruitment of Class 9-10 assistant teachers may begin in a limited manner alongside the higher secondary process.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.