Over 3500 teachers who changed PAN under STF scanner

LUCKNOW: The ongoing police investigation and verification of the basic education department teachers have found that as many as 3,500 teachers changed their PAN card during course of their service period.

The investigators suspect that most of the teachers, who used forged identities to get jobs, were using the PAN cards of others and later changed it when the verification process was initiated.

Earlier, the UP Special Task Force (STF) has exposed the racket of proxy teachers operational in the state. In past two years, the STF had arrested over 60 people involved in recruitment of teachers using documents of other people and their identities.

A senior official of the Special Task Force (STF), who is privy to the development, stated that the investigation had revealed that over 3,500 basic teachers changed their PAN cards after coming into the job.

“There are some cases where PAN cards were mistakenly mentioned wrong in the records and it was changed to correct the details but most of the cases are suspected to be of proxy teachers.

The proxy teachers used PAN cards of people whose identity and documents were used to get the job and later they changed it,” he stated while explaining the proxy teachers’ modus operandi.

“If we say that 20 percent teachers genuinely changed their PAN to correct their details even than over 3,400 cases will be of proxy teachers,” he said.

He said the STF had even come across such cases where two or three teachers had been drawing salaries on the same number and the original candidate got notice from Income Tax department as its earning was shown much more than its original earning. He said over 100 cases have also come up in which the salary of two teachers were withdrawn from the same bank account.

He said the STF had sought details of all those teachers who had changed their PAN after coming into the job. He said the list will be scanned thoroughly to find out whether they have been recruited or used other people’s documents to get the job.

The cases of teachers changing their PAN increased since the basic education department started uploading the data of teachers in council schools.