The West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) on Saturday evening released the names of 1,804 “tainted” teachers from the scandal-plagued 2016 recruitment process, following Supreme Court directives aimed at preventing these candidates from participating in upcoming fresh selection tests.
The list was uploaded at 8pm, two days after the state government assured the Supreme Court it would publish the names of compromised candidates from the 2016 examination that was entirely scrapped by both the Calcutta High Court and the apex court.
“In compliance of the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court dated 28.08.2025… the list of candidates as mentioned in List 1 is attached below, who were selected, whose selection has been set aside by the Hon’ble High Court and confirmed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” read a notice on the commission’s website.
The Supreme Court had on April 3 scrapped the jobs of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff after finding the entire 2016 selection process was vitiated. On August 28, the apex court specifically instructed the commission to publish the list of tainted candidates to prevent them from writing fresh selection tests scheduled for September 7 (secondary level) and September 14 (higher secondary level).
The commission on a Saturday evening uploaded a list of 1,020 candidates whose admit Cards “are being/ have been rejected” because these candidates despite being in the list of the tainted candidates applied to write the selection tests due in September.
In a separate notice, the commission clarified: “If any tainted candidate from the 1st SLST, 2016, selection process are issued provisional admit cards, they should not appear in the 2nd SLST.”
The list stems from a Supreme Court hearing on Thursday, where Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma heard a special leave petition filed by candidate Bejoy Biswas and others. The petitioners sought to bar tainted teachers from the upcoming recruitment process.
According to a commission official, the names were drawn from an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court in mid-February. The affidavit, based on a CBI report, stated that 5,303 candidates were allegedly appointed illegally as teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools. Of these, 1,804 were teachers.
“The list has been uploaded in compliance with the directives received,” said
SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumder.
A commission official earlier told reporters they “had nothing to hide” and explained that no such list was published previously because there was no court directive. An education department official noted that since the commission could submit a detailed affidavit in February, publishing the list was simply a matter of receiving the court order.