SC cancels 25k teacher recruitments by WB school service commission in 2016
The WB government is under investigation by CBI and ED for allegations that ineligible candidates secured jobs by paying large sums to those linked with the ruling TMC
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside the 25,000 teacher recruitments carried out in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), in connection with the ongoing investigation into the teacher recruitment scam.
In a judgment passed by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna, the top court held the entire selection process to be “vitiated” and “tainted”.
“In our opinion, the entire selection process is vitiated and tainted...Manipulations and fraud have vitiated it beyond repair as the legitimacy and credibility of selection is denuded,” it said.
The court was dealing with a bunch of appeals filed by the West Bengal government, the WBSSC and the affected candidates, challenging an April 2024 judgment of the Calcutta High Court that cancelled these appointments and directing refund of the salaries drawn.
The bench found no ground to interfere with the HC’s finding that the entire selection must go. “There is no valid ground to interfere with the HC order since the appointment amounts to fraud and cheating and the entire selection is to be declared null and void as it violates Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 19 (right to fundamental freedoms),” it said.
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However, the court said that candidates who have already got appointed by way of the tainted selection process need not refund the salaries already drawn by them. However, their services will stand terminated.
The WB government is facing multiple investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over allegations that several ineligible candidates gained employment by paying large sums to individuals connected with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
ED arrested education minister Partha Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee on July 23, 2022. Significant amounts of unaccounted cash and jewellery were recovered from his associates.
The bench clarified on Thursday that its findings would not influence the ongoing criminal proceedings. The court also considered a petition from candidates who were already employed with other state governments before being appointed through the 2016 recruitment process, seeking reinstatement in their previous departments.
It allowed a disabled candidate selected under the tainted process to continue on “humanitarian” grounds. However, it maintained that this will not be a precedent for “other disabled candidates”.
“Disabled candidates will be entitled to appear in the fresh recruitment process to be carried out expeditiously and be completed within three months,” it said.
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The court directed the state to consider creating some supernumerary posts for the interregnum.
In 2016, the WBSSC conducted the recruitment test, in which those who got appointments allegedly did not qualify on merit. The CBI probe ordered by the high court found that some candidates who submitted blank Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets got selected while in some cases, those who did not perform well, jumped in ranks over the meritorious candidates.
The HC asked the CBI to continue with its probe and directed the entire recruitment to be cancelled. The court had also directed those selected through the recruitment to return their salaries earned since their appointment.
The CBI informed the court that they had collected scanned copies of the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets from the server of Data Scantech, a company assigned the task of scanning the OMR sheets. Some scanned sheets were also found with an employee of the firm, Pankaj Bansal. The agency told the court that the data available from Bansal was genuine and that the data retrieved from him matched the data from Data Scantech.
However, the state disputed the agency’s claim, arguing that the only material available to the CBI consisted of scanned OMR copies. The state argued that the investigations revealed no “systemic flaw” and that no fault had been found in the manner of conducting the examination.
In addition to Partha Chatterjee, the CBI has arrested other TMC leaders and functionaries, including Manik Bhattacharya, Jiban Krishna Saha, and Kuntal Ghosh.
