Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Tuesday came down heavily on the West Bengal government over the teachers recruitment scam, saying people would lose faith in the system.
Justice Chandrachud dubbed the alleged scam as a “systemic fraud” and said that state government authorities were duty-bound to maintain the digitised records pertaining to the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff.
A bench, comprising the Chief Justice and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, was hearing a plea by the West Bengal government against a high court order invalidating the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff made by the School Service Commission (SSC) in state-run and state-aided schools.
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“The public job is so scarce.... Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes. This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility,” the CJI asked the lawyers representing the West Bengal government, reported PTI.
He further asked: "What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?"
{{/usCountry}}He further asked: "What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?"
{{/usCountry}}The Supreme Court also said that the West Bengal government has nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities.
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"Either you have the data or you do not have it.... You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control," the bench told the state government's lawyers, according to PTI.
Last week, the Supreme Court had stayed the Calcutta High Court order directing the CBI to probe the role of West Bengal government officials in the teacher recruitment scam.
Even though the court pulled up the state for “fraud” in appointing 23,000 persons whose services have been terminated by the Calcutta high court order, it, however, refused to stay the high court order, cancelling the appointments.