The Uttarakhand government on Monday submitted to the high court (HC) that it will verify over 1.3 lakh documents of more than 33,000 teachers within four weeks and submit a report by November 2. The state’s response came while the HC was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) alleging thousands of teachers at government-run schools do not have qualifications needed for the job, which they got by furnishing fake degrees.

The undertaking was made by the counsel appearing for the state government before the division bench of acting Chief Justice Ravi Malimath and Justice Ramesh Chandra Khulbe, after the court refused the accept the earlier statement by the counsel that the government needs at least 18 months to verify and investigate all the documents.

Since each teacher will have furnished four documents each, a total of 1,32,000 need to be verified, the counsel said, adding that since many of the teachers had completed their education from outside the state,verifying their background would be time-consuming.

The PIL had alleged that even though a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed in 2018 to investigate the scam, the progress has been very slow. “After the court refused to accept the (state’s) statement, the state government has now promised that it will verify the documents of every teacher within a period of four weeks and submit a report before the court by the next date of hearing on November 2,” said an advocate present in the hearing.

Source: The Times Of India