A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday rejected the verdict of (retired) Justice Abhijit Ganguly cancelling the appointment of 32,000 teachers in state-run and state-aided primary schools.
The division bench of Justice Tapobrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra pronounced the verdict on Wednesday afternoon.
“After being in service for nine years, if they are removed now, there could be adverse impact on the families,” the bench said.
The verdict, ahead of the Bengal Assembly elections due next year, will bring smiles to the ruling Trinamool, which has been hit by a number of corruption scandals, especially in the education sector.
In 2023, Justice Ganguly had cancelled the appointments of 32,000 primary teachers for alleged manipulation of the recruitment process.
Following the Teachers Eligibility Test held in 2014, a total of 42,500 primary teachers were appointed. The appointment of 32,000 of them was cancelled by the single bench of the high court.
In his order, Justice Ganguly – who has retired and joined the BJP – had asked the state government to execute a fresh recruitment process and complete it within three months.
The division bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Supratim Bhattacharya put an interim stay on the single bench order of cancelling the appointments and granted the state six-months to complete the process of recruitment of a fresh panel.
The state moved the Supreme Court against the division bench order.
The apex court had upheld the stay on appointments to the 32,000 posts and sent back the case to the high court for final hearing.
On 12 November, the division bench of Justice Tapobrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra concluded the hearing in the matter.
In March this year, the Supreme Court had declared invalid the appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff from classes IX-XII in Bengal government-run schools, appointed after the State Level Selection Test conducted by the School Service Commission.
Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari said Justice Ganguly had done did the right thing.
“Under Mamata Banerjee’s rule none of the exams held for government jobs were conducted in a fair manner. In recent times, the police recruitment exams, carbon copy of the OMR sheets was not given to the candidates. Personally, I feel the retired Justice Abhijit Ganguly did the right thing,” Suvendu said.
Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said isolated incidents of mistakes, misdemeanours, negligence and crime were being projected as a complete collapse of the education system.
“We have seen how jobs were given during the Left rule. We have seen what is happening in the BJP-ruled states and exams for central government jobs. Here we are doing it with complete transparency. Yes, there have been some instances of mistakes, misdemeanours, negligence and crime. The chief minister and the government are trying to ensure the genuine candidates are given jobs at the earliest,” Ghosh said.
“A political issue is being created from these isolated instances. We object to that. The BJP, the CPM and a section of the Congress are involved in this.”