19,000 Teachers "Likely To Be Eligible": Bengal School Service Body

The West Bengal School Service Commission on Thursday claimed that it had provided the Calcutta High Court lists of around 5,300 appointees from the 2016 school recruitment panel whose appointments were suspect, and stated that the remaining 19,000-odd teachers were "likely to be eligible".

The commission also said it believed that the 19,000 teachers, whose appointments also stand cancelled due to a high court judgment, might have met the necessary qualification criteria laid down by the appointing authorities.

Talking to reporters, state SSC Chairman Siddhartha Majumdar said, "We submitted before the court lists of candidates where anomalies in recruitment were found. These lists were based on two specific irregularities in recruitment, namely Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet manipulation and rank jumps. The total number of such candidates for Groups C and D and teachers for classes 9-10 and 11-12 was around 5,300." The claim came in the aftermath of a judgment of a high court special bench on Monday, scrapping all 25,753 appointments made through the recruitment process of State Level Selection Test-2016 (SLST) in West Bengal government-sponsored and aided schools.

The court also directed that a section of those recruits will have to return salaries drawn by them along with 12 per cent per annum interest.

In its judgment, the court stated that it chose to cancel the entire appointment panel since it became impossible to separate the grain from the chaff because of non-cooperation from the SSC and the Bengal government in providing the names of those illegally recruited.

Given the high court order, the commission will soon initiate a new recruitment process in which fresh candidates and those who lost school jobs on account of the court judgment can apply, Majumdar said.

"Our lawyers have pointed out some areas of confusion in the HC judgment on which we will seek guidance from the Supreme Court. All the affidavits submitted to the HC in the past by SSC have been placed before the apex court," he said.

There were four affidavits filed before the court since December last year where the commission provided the names and roll numbers of the suspected recruits, Majumdar said, adding that the lists were also shared with the CBI.

It deserves mention that the court, in its judgment, had listed 17 types of irregularities which were resorted to in perpetrating the recruitment scam.

Stating that the SSC has so far found that over 19,000 candidates from the 2016-SLST test were eligible and had no irregularities in appointment, Majumdar said, "We have filed a review petition before the Supreme Court challenging the Calcutta High Court judgment." The SSC chairman maintained that the claims made by certain quarters that the commission did not inform the CBI and the court about its findings were false.

"The court had placed four queries before us and we answered every one of them. The CBI also agreed to many submissions made by us in the court and we don't think so many candidates were fraudulently recruited. The agency is at liberty to make its own analysis and observations, but not all candidates can be equally inefficient," he said.

Majumdar also said before he assumed office, the SSC had conducted a counselling of the 2016 batch on August 3, 2020, despite the expiry of the panel, which "should not have been done on technical grounds".

"However, the court did not object to that as it was done strictly on merit," he added.

Meanwhile, state education minister Bratya Basu said the state government will preserve OMR sheets for 10 years.

Speaking to reporters at Trinamool Bhavan, Basu emphasised the state's decision to retain the OMR sheets of each candidate for a decade, drawing from the lessons of the SSC recruitment controversy.

He indicated that the majority of the 26,000 SSC job recipients in 2017-18 were indeed eligible, citing SSC's acknowledgement that 92 per cent of them were deemed qualified.

Basu criticised the narrative propagated by the BJP and certain quarters, alleging widespread irregularities in SSC recruitment despite the state government's intervention and punitive measures against wrongdoers.

He denounced this narrative as detrimental to the interests of the people of Bengal and contrary to the ethos of "Maa Mati Manush" (Mother, Land, People). 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)