Patna, May 18 (IANS): The Patna High Court on Monday directed the director of Bihar vigilance department to probe the recruitment of nearly 40,000 government teachers who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get the jobs, a lawyer said.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice L. Narasimha Reddy ordered the probe on the petition of Ranjit Pandit, and asked for an investigation report within four weeks.

Senior lawyer Dinu Kumar, who appeared for Pandit, said the court has asked the director of state vigilance to complete the verification of degrees and certificates of teachers recruited by the state government from 2006 till date.

"In view of the next Bihar assembly polls later this year, the state government was not taking action against the teachers, who used fake degrees to get jobs," he said.

Last week, the court directed the principal secretary, education, to file an action taken report in the case. After this, the state education department asked all the 38 district administrations to submit within a month degrees of nearly 430,000 teachers for verification.

Earlier, the state government admitted that it recruited nearly three lakh contract teachers without verifying their educational and professional degrees.

The petition was filed in the high court last year seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the recruitment of 40,000 teachers who allegedly used fake degree certificates to get jobs in government schools.

The petitioner said he has collected documents as evidence through Right to Information (RTI) queries to prove that thousands of teachers used forged degrees to get jobs in government schools in Bihar.