School Jobs Scam: Supreme Court sets aside Calcutta High Court interim order for fresh selection to 32,000 teacher posts

The Supreme Court on Friday set aside an interim order of the Calcutta High Court directing the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) to conduct a fresh selection exercise for 32,000 teacher posts before the end of August 2023. .Justices JK Maheshwari and KV Viswanathan passed the order while making it clear that they were not commenting on the merits of the case. Rather, the bench opined that it was convinced by the submission that the High Court single judge had passed the initial order in the case without hearing the teachers or their representatives. Hence, the top court concluded that the High Court division bench order upholding the single judge's direction to conduct the fresh selection exercise was not justified and set it aside.The top court also directed the High Court to hear the case relating to school jobs for cash scam expeditiously..The Court was hearing an appeal against a Calcutta High Court order of May 19 that had stayed an order of the single judge, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who had set aside the appointment of 32,000 teachers in West Bengal.The division bench of Justices Subrata Talukdar and Supratim Bhattacharya had stayed the order but maintained that the Board should conduct a fresh selection exercise before the end of August 2023 as ordered by Justice Gangopadhyay..On appeal, the counsel for the terminated teachers told the Supreme Court that they were not heard nor provided any interim protection..By an order passed on May 12, Justice Gangopadhyay had cancelled the appointments of the teachers saying he could smell "stinking rats" in the the recruitments scam known as the school jobs for cash scam.The single judge was hearing matters related to illegal recruitment in schools in West Bengal. The judge was told that during the recruitment process held in 2016, thousands of "untrained" candidates were appointed despite their scoring less in the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) and 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. The judge also 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, the Court found.This was in clear violation of the Recruitment Rules, the single judge had observed.He had, therefore, cancelled the appointments of all the 32,000 candidates, who were found to have been untrained at the time of the recruitment process in 2016.