The Bengal government has appointed Dushyant Nariala, a 1993-batch IAS officer, as the chairman of the state School Service Commission (SSC) with the stated objective of making flawless appointments in the state-aided schools.
This is the first time that a senior IAS officer has been appointed as the chairman of the SSC. During the previous Trinamool Congress regime, a university teacher allegedly close to the ruling party used to be appointed in the position.
“We had announced in our budget that there would be no political person at the helm of recruitment bodies... As per our promise, we have appointed experienced and senior IAS officer, Dushyant Nariala, as the chairman of West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBCSSC) to ensure tranperant appointments in the recruitment process,” chief minister Suvendu Adhikari wrote on his X handle on Saturday evening.
The allegation of irregularities in appointments in the state-aided schools was one of the biggest controversies the Mamata Banerjee government had faced.
A senior government official said that the new dispensation learnt from the mistakes of the previous administration.
“Nariala is an upright officer and proved that he does not get bogged down under political pressure when he conducted the Assembly polls as the chief secretary a few months ago. As he is known to be an honest and upright officer, it is expected that appointments in the schools would be clean,” said a source.
Suvendu had made it clear that his government would bring changes in the recruitment rules to ensure free and fair appointments in the state government vacancies. The new rules are yet to be formed.
“The new government has announced 1 lakh government appointments in its maiden budget speech. Of them, 50,000 will be the posts of teachers and non-teaching staff. The SSC is the body that would recruit the majority of the teachers and non-teaching staff. So, appointing Nariala at the helm of the SSC is important,” said an official.
Nariala was appointed as the resident commissioner of the state in Delhi along with the charge of director general of the Administrative Training Institute at Salt Lake. He had conducted the Assembly polls as the chief secretary after the Election Commission had removed Nandini Chakravorty from the position as soon as the elections were declared in March.
“But after the new government took over in May, the then chief electoral officer of the state, Manoj Agarwal, was appointed as the chief secretary and Nariala was given the new responsibilities. He will hold the charge of SSC as an additional responsibility along with the other responsibilities,” said an official.