Education
Bihar’s New Domicile Rule Requires Married Women to Use Parents’ Address for Teacher Quota
In a notification issued on September 22, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) stated that married women who wish to avail the teacher quota must present caste, residence and non‑creamy layer certificates from their parents’ address, not their husbands’. The directive was released as the BPSC opened applications for its 32,388 teacher posts through the Teachers Recruitment Examination (TRE)-4. The rule, which came into effect in 2025, adds an extra layer of filtering for applicants.
A BPSC official explained that because Bihar had not enforced its domicile policy in the past three examinations, women candidates were previously able to use their husbands’ addresses. The commission now seeks to ensure foolproof implementation of the domicile policy and clarify rules for women married into Bihar.
In previous TREs, the BPSC has appointed a large number of teachers. In TRE‑I (August 2023) about 120,000 teachers were appointed out of 170,000 advertised vacancies. TRE‑II (December 2023) selected roughly 96,000 teachers from 122,000 posts across primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary cadres. TRE‑III, originally scheduled for March 2024, was cancelled after a paper leak and re‑conducted in July 2024 for 87,774 vacancies; the commission subsequently selected around 70,000 candidates across the four school cadres.
Officials noted that about 50,000 out‑of‑state teachers have been appointed in TRE‑I to TRE‑III since 2023, representing nearly one‑fifth of the BPSC’s 268,000 teacher appointments. Of the 568,000 teachers hired since 2006, a significant number came from other states, which has upset Bihar candidates. When the Bihar Teacher Recruitment Rules were first notified in March 2023, a mandatory domicile policy was added, but the Bihar cabinet scrapped it in July 2023, meaning the policy was never enforced.
The August 2024 notification introduced a 40% quota for candidates who passed matriculation or intermediate from institutions in Bihar. Under the new policy, there is no direct quota for candidates from outside Bihar; they must compete for 15% open seats. Non‑domicile candidates also do not receive state reservation benefits such as women’s quota and other relaxations, and they must score 60% in central and state teacher eligibility tests to qualify – the highest requirement among categories.
Bihar reserves 85% of state teacher recruitment posts for permanent residents through various reservation quotas. The BPSC has not yet announced the exam schedule for TRE‑4. Of the 32,388 vacancies, 3,847 are for Class 1–5, 8,563 for Class 6–8, 3,878 for Class 9–10, and 16,101 for Class 11–12.
According to the UDISE+ 2024‑25 report, Bihar has about 94,339 schools, both government and private. Roughly 80.84% to 80.90% (about 76,000 to 76,300) are government‑managed, served by approximately 707,000 teachers.