190 teachers in UP sacked for using fake degrees

AGRA: The basic education department terminated 190 teachers in Mainpuri and Etah for using fake BEd degrees and certificates to secure their jobs. Total 116 teachers were dismissed in Etahand 74 in Mainpuri, taking the total number of teachers dismissed by the department to 214 across the state ever since a special investigation team (SIT) found the anomalies in 2017.
After UP DGP had ordered a probe in 2017, the SIT found that 4,704 people had been issued fake degrees, allegedly issued by Agra University in 2004-05.It also found that 1,424 of them had been appointed by the basic shiksha department. “The department has identified 1,424 individuals out of 4704, who are working as a teacher in BSA schools across the state.
"Of these, 214 have been terminated so far, while 618 teachers, who were issued notices in this regard, have got a stay order from the high court,” said secretary, UP Basic Siksha Parishad, Ruby Singh.
Departmental probe is going on as 11 districts — Meerut, Ghaziabad, Pratapgarh, Jhansi, Rampur, Jalaun, Mahoba, Ambedkar Nagar, Bijnor, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar — have not submitted any information so far, said officials. The number of termination can go up in the coming days, claimed officials.
According to a senior official, the court has given interim relief to many as the university from where these certificates/mark-sheets were issued have not declared these documents “illegal”. He told TOI that the department can not give any proof to the court in this regard. Probe is also going on to find out to locate 3,283 others on SIT’s ‘fake degree’ list, who might have found jobs in other departments.
Mainpuri’s Basic Siksha Adhikari, Vijay Pratap Singh said that out of 74 teachers, who were teaching students of class I to V, 33 teachers’ BEd mark sheets were found tampered for increasing their marks and 41 degrees were found “fake”.
Elaborating the fake degrees, Singh said that students who had secured admissions out of authorised numbers of seats in the affiliated colleges or university were considered fake. He said, that all the dismissed teachers started their services in the basic shiksha parishad schools in Mainpuri almost 10 years ago. Majority of them are from Mainpuri, he added.
Singh told TOI that FIRs would be registered against them and orders for the same have been issued. According to officials, each teacher was getting salary of Rs 30-35K per month, on an average, as few of them were promoted to upper primary sections during this period. The process for recovery of the salaries will also be initiated soon, said an official in the education department.
Etah Basic Siksha Adhikari, Sanjay Singh, also confirmed the removal of 116 teachers from the district. He said, 85 out of 116 mark sheets were found tampered and remaining were reported fake.
Till now, five employees of Agra University have been arrested in this connection. The SIT in its report had mentioned that as many as 3,652 employees in the state education department had fake degrees and 1,052 employees had tampered degrees, said education department officials.