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Calcutta HC cancels appointment of 1,911 school staff in Bengal recruitment scam
The Calcutta high court cancelled the appointments of 1,911 Group D staff in various schools in West Bengal while hearing the multi-crore recruitment scam on Friday
The Calcutta high court cancelled the appointments of 1,911 Group D staff in various schools in West Bengal while hearing the multi-crore recruitment scam on Friday.
“The bench of justice Abhijit Gangopadhayay directed the West Bengal School Service Commission to cancel the recommendation given to 1,911 candidates,” said counsel for the petitioners, Adv Firdaus Shamim. The petitioners in this case are those candidates who qualified the recruitment and eligibility tests but were not recruited.
“Till date the Calcutta high court has cancelled jobs of more than 3,000 candidates who got their appointments of teachers and non-teaching staff in various state-run schools using fraudulent means. The list includes the name of Ankita Adhikary, daughter of former minister Paresh Adhikary, who was recruited as a school teacher,” Shamim said.
The high court also said that the recruitment in the 2,500-odd vacancies that would be created will have to be completed within the next three weeks.
“The candidates whose jobs were cancelled were directed to refund the salary they have got in instalments. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the recruitment scam, has been directed to question these candidates,” Shamim added.
During the probe, it was found that OMR data of at least 2,823 candidates were manipulated so that they could get jobs of Group D staff in government schools. The recruitment dates back to 2016.
West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) chairman, Siddhartha Majumdar, said, “The commission has cancelled the recommendation of 1,911 candidates. In all these cases the differences in marks were huge. In the remaining cases, where the differences in marks is very less, we are checking them once again so that there is no mistake before cancelling the recommendation.”
HT earlier reported that the CBI had identified as many as 8,163 candidates whose marks were manipulated so that they could be recruited as teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools.
A total of 23,449 candidates were recruited as teachers for Class 9 to 12 and as Group C and Group D staff in state-run schools from 2014.
A senior CBI official said that it was mentioned in the report that most of the undeserving candidates had either submitted blank OMR sheets during their exam or filled up to a maximum of six to seven blank spaces.
Data in the hard disk, mother board and computer server of the SSC were later manipulated to increase their marks, the officer added.
The high court ordered a CBI probe into the school recruitment scam in May last year and the agency lodged a first information report (FIR) in the same month. Later, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also initiated a probe into the money laundering in the case and arrested former state education minister Partha Chatterjee. Around ₹50 core was seized by the central agency from two flats of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of Chatterjee.
