The Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) on Tuesday announced the fourth phase of its Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE-4), opening one of the state s biggest recruitment drives for school teachers even as teaching aspirants were already protesting in Pat The Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) on Tuesday announced the fourth phase of its Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE-4), opening one of the state s biggest recruitment drives for school...
The Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) on Tuesday announced the fourth phase of its Teacher Recruitment Examination (TRE-4), opening one of the state’s biggest recruitment drives for school teachers even as teaching aspirants were already protesting in Patna over delays in the post-exam notifications and other recruitment issues.
The commission has notified 32,388 teaching posts under TRE-4, with applications scheduled to begin on September 1. The notification came within hours of a protest at Gardanibagh, where teacher aspirants had demanded that the recruitment schedule be announced within 24 hours.
Protests over TRE-4 had also taken place earlier this year in May, when police action against demonstrators drew criticism from opposition leaders, who at the time had criticised the police action.
On Tuesday, the protest gained political backing. RJD member and leader of the opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, told the gathering that the entire opposition stood with the aspirants. He said the recruitment process for TRE-1 and TRE-2 had begun when the RJD was in government and argued that unemployment and recruitment delays should not be allowed to become political or caste issues.
CPI (ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya also backed the protesters. He compared the Gardanibagh protest with the student agitation at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and said recruitment and examination irregularities had become a wider issue across states. He cited the recent student movement in Jharkhand as well, arguing that governments should engage with protesters rather than treat them as a law-and-order problem.
Their support comes against a recruitment cycle that has repeatedly faced delays, examination-related controversies and disputes over vacancies and recruitment rules.
The first BPSC teacher recruitment examination was notified in May 2023 with 1,70,461 posts for school teachers. The examination was held from August 24 to 26, 2023.
Even before the first examination, the new recruitment system had triggered protests. Bihar had moved to recruitment through a BPSC examination and removed the earlier domicile restriction, allowing candidates from across India to apply. The domicile issue became a major point of contention among Bihar-based aspirants, with protests taking place in Patna in July 2023.
TRE-2 followed within months. The second phase was advertised in November 2023, and the examination was conducted in December. The examination schedule ran from December 7 to 16, 2023, covering more than 1.2 lakh teaching posts.
The recruitment process also faced scrutiny after the examination, including verification of candidates and their documents before appointments.
The process became more complicated with the issue of unfilled vacancies. A later Patna High Court proceeding recorded that 1,22,286 posts had been advertised in TRE-2, while about 94,000 candidates were declared successful. The court record also noted that several vacancies remained and that the government was considering supplementary results for leftover posts.
Then came TRE-3. The third phase was announced in February 2024 with 87,774 vacancies, and the examination was held from March 15, 2024. However, the March 15 examination was later cancelled after evidence of a question-paper leak emerged. About 3.75 lakh candidates had appeared for the affected examination, according to local media reports.
The cancelled examination was subsequently rescheduled and held from July 19 to 22, 2024, allowing the TRE-3 recruitment process to continue. But the recruitment disputes did not end with the re-examination.
Candidates later began demanding a supplementary result for vacant posts. In 2025, aspirants protested for months in Patna and even confronted the education minister over the delay. In May, police used force to disperse protesters near Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s residence.
The issue resurfaced again in September 2025. TRE-3 candidates marched towards the Chief Minister’s residence, arguing that thousands of posts had remained vacant. Aspirants said they had been waiting for the supplementary result for months and that the delay was becoming particularly serious for candidates nearing the upper age limit.
The BPSC’s examination calendar had indicated that TRE-4 was to be held much earlier. Candidates had been demanding the TRE-4 notification for months and had repeatedly protested over the delay. Protests began again, including demonstrations in April and the larger Patna agitation in May.
While the situation unraveled in Patna, another protest has been working in neighbouring Jharkhand, where students have been protesting alleged irregularities in examinations conducted through the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) and demanding wider reforms in the state’s recruitment system.
The agitation intensified in July over alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations, continuing for more than three weeks, by the time the government acted on August 17. Students demanded cancellation of the disputed examinations, an independent probe and reforms in the state’s recruitment agencies.
The movement intensified when student leader Devendra Nath Mahto began a hunger strike. He continued the fast for 16 days before ending it after the government announced the cancellation of the JSSC-CGL examination and other tests conducted by TDPL, earlier this week. Students had also demanded an independent probe into the alleged irregularities.
