Lucknow, Dec 29 (IANS): The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to order a Special Task Force (STF) probe into the 'unverified' teachers issue if they do not verify their service books by January 4.

At least 16,838 teachers in the state have not verified their service books by the December 17 deadline on the 'Manav Sampada' website which is an online database of teachers, created for the digitisation of records.

The deadline has now been extended to January 4.

According to an official spokesman, the government will ask the STF to probe the cases of teachers who have not verified their service books.

Over 6.1 lakh teachers, appointed in the basic education department, were asked to verify their service books.

The process was followed by around 5.9 lakh teachers, which is around 97.2 per cent of the total verifications sought by the department.

During this exercise, teachers were required to make corrections, if any, in a Google sheet.

They also had to upload their educational documents - from high school to degree level.

The education department has intensified the digitisation process after a 'fake' teacher scam was reported in June this year, in which a full-time science teacher named Anamika Shukla was found working at 25 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBV) simultaneously for 13 months and taking home approximately Rs 1 crore as salary.

A STF probe was then initiated to identify fake teachers in the state and more than 350 primary teachers working on the credentials of other teachers, were arrested.