The Supreme Court stayed on Friday the interim order passed by the Calcutta High Court, which had directed the State of West Bengal to select fresh teachers for 32,000 posts by August, 2023.
The Division Bench of Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice K.V. Viswanathan observed that since the matter pertained to selection and appointment of a large number of Assistant Teachers, the controversy ought to be decided at the earliest.
It directed the Calcutta High Court to expedite hearing on the writ petition challenging the Single-Judge Bench verdict, noting that the impugned order was passed by the Single-Judge Bench without hearing the petitioners even in a representative capacity.
The Apex Court passed the directions on a writ petition filed against the May 19 order of the Division bench, which had partially stayed the Single-Judge Bench verdict of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay on appointment of 32,000 teachers in West Bengal, but permitted fresh recruitment of teachers.
On May 12, Justice Gangopadhyay had cancelled the appointments of the teachers saying that he could smell ‘stinking rats’ in the scam related to alleged illegal recruitment of teachers in schools of West Bengal.
During the course of hearing, Justice Gangopadhyay was apprised that during the recruitment process held in 2016, thousands of ‘untrained’ candidates were appointed as teachers, despite scoring less in the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) and on other counts.
The single judge had inferred that to recruit such candidates who scored less, they were given extra marks or maximum marks in aptitude tests which were shown to be conducted only on paper.
Justice Gangopadhyay noted that no selection committee was constituted for the purpose of selecting eligible candidates. Instead, this was done by an outside agency, a third party that was not at all a part of the Education Board. This was in clear violation of the Recruitment Rules, he observed.
The Single Judge then cancelled the appointments of all 32,000 candidates, who were found to have been untrained at the time of the recruitment process in 2016.
The order was challenged before the Division Bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Supratim Bhattacharya, which partially stayed the Single-Judge Bench order on May 19, but it maintained that the West Bengal Board of Primary Education should conduct a fresh selection exercise before the end of August 2023, as ordered by Justice Gangopadhyay.
The counsel appearing for the terminated teachers apprised the Apex Court on Friday that they were neither heard, nor provided any interim protection.