On his registration form for one of the new teaching positions in India, the candidate who called himself Osama Bin Laden said his father’s name was Bill Clinton.
He was one of hundreds of bizarre false names given by chancers apparently hoping to secure jobs in schools in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India.
Perhaps the so-called ‘Abcdefgh’ thought he would stand a better chance of teaching children English when he told India’s Ministry of Education that his father’s name was Xyz. Or maybe bow-wielding Hindu deity Jai Sri Ram thought he needed a break from heavenly duties to help boost the state’s religious education results.
There was even one aspirant who gave his name as Farji, which translates as ‘fake’. His father’s name was given as Farji Singh. And unsurprisingly, all these applicants had spotless academic records to boot, with 100 per cent marks in all exams.
When dead terrorist ‘Osama bin Laden’ applied for a teaching post at an Indian primary school last year, citing Bill Clinton as his father, it did not take long for teachers to unravel his masquerade.
But rather than dismiss the applications out of hand, the state’s basic education department allotted them all registration numbers and and even issued letters for counselling on their ‘fake’ addresses.
Such aspirants, shortlisted in the first list of candidates for the primary teachers’ job, have made the state’s basic education department’s recruitment drive a laughing stock.
