One of the cornerstones of the political earthquake Bangladesh witnessed in 2024, i.e. the July Uprising, was the expectation that state institutions would be kept above partisan practices. For which a good starting place is to clean up the recruitment process for jobs in the public sector. The Public Administration Reforms Commission that was appointed by the interim government of Muhammad Yunus recommended separating the education and health services from the BCS cadre system, precisely for this purpose.

Even the Police Reform Commission recommended ending political background checks in the job verification process for government jobs, for which the police are brought in (alongside the standard security check). What the commission was saying, in essence, was that their involvement in this process tends to have a corrupting influence on the police, and thus they should be kept away from it.

In keeping with this broad aim, in July 2025, the interim government decided to scrap intelligence-agency vetting of someone's political affiliation during public service recruitment, as well as ahead of any promotion for those already in government jobs. These were important commitments. But reform only matters when citizens experience it in practice, and the first real test for the BNP government in this regard came in the form of the recruitment exercise for assistant teachers in the country's primary schools.

Based on the results of a recruitment exam they gave in December 2025, 14,384 people were finally recommended for appointment in 61 districts by the outgoing interim government last February 8. They were scheduled to join their posts on October 1. Before that, on September 24, the district primary education offices published the lists of those selected for appointment. Soon after that, information started emerging about individuals whose names were there in the 14,384, yet were still to receive their appointment letters. Opposition figures like Nahid Islam immediately smelled a rat, and went as far as to allege the BNP government had weighed in on the process through the verification exercise. Estimates for the number of candidates who were affected by this, presumably on the basis of their political affiliations, ranged from 1000 to 2700.

When the matter was brought to the attention of Education Minister A.N.M. Milon, he urged patience on the part of the candidates who hadn't yet received their appointment letters. And once October 1 came and went, the full picture that emerged vindicated the education minister, as well as his state minister, Bobby Hajjaj, who had insisted all along that they were not interfering with the process.

According to data from the Directorate of Primary Education, even before September 24, some 553 of the recommended candidates had decided to drop out of the process on their own, by not providing supporting documents for the last stage. Of the rest, 13,748 were issued appointment letters, and 12,830 reported for duty on October 1. It meant hardly 80 candidates or so could have been tripped up during the verification process, which is a far more acceptable figure than the ones being bandied about by the opposition. The real story was that nearly a thousand candidates received appointment letters and yet decided not to join. But that's a topic for another day.