Kolkata, July 8: The West Bengal government and the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) have separately filed petitions challenging a Calcutta High Court single-judge bench order that directed the exclusion of “tainted” candidates from the fresh recruitment process for school teaching posts.
The order, issued on Monday by Justice Saugata Bhattacharya, instructed that any candidate already identified as “tainted” in connection with the 2016 recruitment scam should be barred from participating in the new selection process. Applications already submitted by such candidates were to be summarily rejected.
This directive follows the Supreme Court’s April 2024 order, which cancelled 25,753 teaching jobs issued under the 2016 recruitment panel, deeming the entire process illegal.
However, Justice Bhattacharya did not accept the petitioners’ argument opposing two new weightage criteria introduced in the latest recruitment notification. These include 10 marks each for “prior teaching experience” and “lecture demonstration.” Petitioners argued that introducing these criteria would unfairly benefit former employees whose appointments were previously invalidated and disadvantage fresh applicants.
In response, fresh petitions were filed challenging different parts of the single-judge’s order. One group of petitioners opposed the new weightage system, citing the need for a level playing field in a recruitment process that follows a Supreme Court-mandated reset. They contended that candidates whose jobs were earlier deemed illegal should not benefit from added advantages in the new round.
Meanwhile, the state government and WBSSC contested the exclusion of “tainted” candidates, arguing for their inclusion in the revised hiring.
Both sets of petitions were submitted to the division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das, which has admitted them for hearing. The legal battle now continues over what rules should govern the massive re-hiring process for West Bengal’s government-run schools.
