Justice Amrita Sinha of Calcutta High Court on Thursday issued an interim order directing the school service commission (SSC) to upload, at the earliest, the OMR (optical mark recorder) sheets of all candidates who wrote the teacher selection tests in September.
The order came a day after the Supreme Court remitted to the high court a batch of petitions challenging the Bengal government’s fresh recruitment rules for appointing schoolteachers.
Justice Sinha also asked the commission to publish by December 10 a list of candidates appointed after the expiry of the recruitment panel originally drawn up through a 2016 selection process for assistant teachers in Classes IX to XII.
Earlier, while terminating the jobs of 17,209 teachers at the secondary and higher secondary levels of government-aided schools, the Supreme Court had cited the panel’s expiry as one among several irregularities that “vitiated” the 2016 recruitment.
Justice Sinha said on Thursday that the fate of all candidates now rested on the outcome of the cases pending before her bench.
A group of candidates had moved the Supreme Court protesting the SSC’s decision to award 10 additional marks for teaching experience to in-service teachers who took the fresh tests in an attempt to retain their posts after being sacked under the apex court’s April 3 ruling.
Despite being identified as untainted, 15,403 candidates lost their jobs following that order. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court permitted the high court to hear petitions relating to the new recruitment exercise.
When some petitioners informed Justice Sinha of the Supreme Court’s latest directions and pressed for urgent hearings, a lawyer argued that document verification of candidates who had cleared the State Level Selection Test (SLST) was already underway. Justice Sinha responded: “You are worried about the verification of the documents at a time when the fate of the entire selection process is facing a challenge. Wait for the result of the cases.”
The commission had handed out duplicate copies of OMR sheets to all candidates on the day of the tests. An education department official, questioning the need for publication of the sheets again, said: “It is unclear why Justice Amrita Sinha felt the need to publish the OMR sheets when the commission had already provided all the candidates with their duplicate copies. She must be knowing that.”
The SSC had published model answers, opened a five-day window in September for challenges, and then issued the final answer key on the basis of which scripts were evaluated.
Education minister Bratya Basu said on Thursday: “Show me any other examination in the country where so much transparency is maintained during the recruitment process. You will not find a match.”
A lawyer representing the SSC told the court that the commission was mandated by the Supreme Court to complete all appointment processes by December 31. “A section of the candidates is trying to disrupt the recruitment process,” the lawyer said.
The commission began document verification on November 18 for candidates on the preliminary list of interviewees for higher secondary posts (Classes XI and XII). The list is based on SLST results from September 14, along with academic qualifications and teaching experience. Final selections will follow interviews and lecture demonstrations.
Verification for secondary-level aspirants — who took the September 7 test — will begin after December 4.
Asked whether the December 31 deadline seemed achievable, minister Basu said: “We are mandated to do so. That is why we are going ahead with the process.”