The West Bengal government today approached the Supreme Court against the Calcutta High Court’s recent verdict cancelling about 24,000 appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff made in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).
While holding the recruitment invalid, the High Court had ordered 24,000 candidates to return the salaries they received after being illegally recruited. The West Bengal government in its Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the top court, alleged that the High Court on the basis of verbal submissions and in absence of any affidavit on record had arbitrarily cancelled the appointments.
The plea stated that the same was done in utter disregard of the fact that it will lead to a huge vacuum in the schools. It added that the High Court failed to appreciate the ramification of cancelling the entire selection process leading to straightaway termination of 23,123 teaching and non- teaching staff from service with immediate effect, without giving sufficient time to the state to deal with such an exigency, rendering the education system at a stand-still.
The state government has also questioned the direction to undertake a fresh selection process in respect of the vacancies preferably within a fortnight of the declaration of the results of the Lok Sabha elections.
Notably, the School Jobs for Cash Scam relates to various illegal recruitments allegedly made in the primary and secondary schools across the state during the recruitment process of 2016. More than 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. Furthermore, it had been alleged before the High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR Sheets.
The Calcutta High Court Bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi had noted that there was no clarity which of the 23 lakh sheets were evaluated properly and therefore, ordered re-evaluation of all the sheets of the recruitment entrance exams.