Bihar Minister’s appointment as Assistant Professor put on hold due to shortcomings

Bihar Education Department Minister Sunil Kumar on Monday, December 29, 2025, said that there were deficiencies in the matter which led to the postponement of the appointment of Ashok Choudhary as Assistant Professor.

Sources said the appointment of Mr. Choudhary, who is serving as a Minister in the Bihar government, was delayed due to a discrepancy in his name. In June last year, he was selected as Assistant Professor of Political Science at Pataliputra University.

Mr. Choudhary passed the Bihar State University Service Commission (BSUSC) recruitment exam and was selected as one of the 274 candidates after the interview.

Addressing the media in Patna, Mr. Kumar said, “The matter has been referred to the commission, which will also conduct its opinion and investigation. After receiving the list, we did the review and then took the opinion of the commission.”

When asked about the discrepancies in his appointment, Mr. Kumar said: “There were some shortcomings and on some issues we are examining them in minute detail and after finding the discrepancies, we took the opinion of the commission.”

Sources said that during the investigation, two different names were found in the education documents and election declaration.

Mr. Kumar also announced that the request for appointment of school teachers through Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE)-4 will be sent to Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) by January 14.

Mr. Kumar said that the State government has so far appointed 2,27,195 teachers in government schools in three phases through BPSC and this is an example in itself.

“There was a delay of 3-4 months in sending the request to BPSC for appointment of teachers through TRE-4 because they (education department officials) were busy with assembly polls. Now the post has been cleared and we will definitely send the request to BPSC between January 10 and 14 (2026),” Mr. Kumar said.

The Minister was accompanied by the ministry’s Additional Chief Secretary B. Rajender, Secretary Dinesh Kumar, Director Higher Education NK Agarwal, Director (Administration) Manoranjan Kumar and other senior officials.

He also announced that the government will appoint 5,500 librarians in the state. The state government has already sent a request to appoint 7,000 “special teachers” for “differently-abled children”, he said, adding that it was the duty of the government to take care of these children.

Highlighting the achievements of the government in the last two decades under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, Mr. Kumar said that the size of teachers, students and budget has increased manifold, besides the student-teacher ratio has increased from 65:1 in 2005 to 29:1 in 2025.

“The budget of the education department has increased from a paltry budget of ₹4341 crore to ₹72,652.44 crore in the current fiscal. The number of teachers has almost tripled to 5.87 lakh from 2.04 lakh in 2005 in 78,000 schools. 1.76 crore children are studying in government schools, while 20 lakh students are studying in private government schools,” he added.

He claimed that the rate of children out of school decreased from 12.5 percent in 2005 to 1 percent.

“The state has witnessed a tremendous increase in literacy rate, which is clearly evident by the increase in male literacy rate from 71.20% in 2011 (census) to 84.91% in 2023, while female literacy rate has increased from 51.50% in 2011 (census) to 73.91% in 2023.

Responding to a question on the strict implementation of 25 per cent seats reserved for children belonging to economically weaker sections in private schools, the Minister said that this falls under the Right to Education (RTE) and this will be strictly implemented from the next session.