Why were 24k school job appointments cancelled? West Bengal moves Supreme Court

The West Bengal government on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court against the Calcutta High Court's recent decision to cancel about 24,000 appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff made in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).The High Court, while holding the recruitment invalid, had ordered the 24,000 candidates to return the salaries they received after being "illegally" recruited.In the Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the top court, the State has alleged that the High Court on the basis of oral submissions and in absence of any affidavit on record had arbitrarily cancelled the appointments.The same was done in "utter disregard" of the fact that it will lead to a huge vacuum in the schools, the SLP said."The Hon’ble 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 Petitioner State to deal with such an exigency, rendering the education system at a stand-still," the plea stated.The State 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..The infamous School Jobs for Cash Scam pertains to various illegal recruitments allegedly made in the primary and secondary schools across the State during the recruitment process of 2016..Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It had been alleged before the High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR Sheets.The High Court Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and 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.It had also ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue with the investigation into the recruitment scam..Several persons including the former education minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress (TMC) party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the scam along with suspended TMC leaders like Santanu Kundu and Kuntal Ghosh.