The Supreme Court on Friday directed that the Bengal teacher recruitment tests scheduled for September 7 and 14 will proceed as planned.
The directive came even as the state assured the court that it would try to publish “if possible by today” the list of “tainted candidates” in the earlier 2016 examination that was entirely scrapped by the concurrent orders of the Calcutta High Court and the apex court.
An SSC official in Calcutta said the list would be put out on Saturday. “The commission’s counsel, senior advocate Kalyan Bandyopadhayay, informed the apex court on Thursday that the list will be uploaded. The commission has all the details. The list will be uploaded on Saturday,” the official said on condition of
anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue. The commission did not specify any particular time for the release of the list.
SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumder declined to comment on the matter.
The Supreme Court also offered relief to the untainted teachers. The bench comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma ruled that age relaxation must be granted to candidates regardless of which class levels they are applying for — whether 9-10th grades, 11-12th grades, or both categories.
The clarification came after senior advocate Sridhar Potharaju and advocate Aastha Shrestha, appearing for petitioner Bibek Paria, complained that the state had issued fresh rules on August 25, which suggested limiting age relaxation to only one test category per candidate.
On Thursday, the bench of Justice Kumar and Justice Sharma heard a special leave petition filed by Bejoy Biswas and other candidates, who requested that tainted school teachers be barred from the upcoming recruitment process.
The petitioners expressed concern that several candidates who had been expressly barred from the fresh recruitment process due to their involvement in the tainted 2016 selection had managed to slip through the screening process.
Justice Kumar, heading the bench, on Friday reminded senior advocate Bandyopadhayay, representing the SSC, that under the Supreme Court’s April 3 judgment — which upheld the Calcutta High Court’s decision to quash the entire 2016 recruitment process — tainted candidates are prohibited from participating in the fresh selection process.
The bench said it would allow the state to proceed with the September examinations scheduled for September 7 (secondary level) and September 14 (higher secondary
level) while scheduling all connected matters for detailed hearing at a later date.
According to a February affidavit submitted by the SSC to the Supreme Court, 5,303 candidates were allegedly appointed illegally as teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided schools. The affidavit, filed on the basis of a CBI report, states that of these 5,303 candidates, 1,803 were specifically identified as tainted teachers.
The commission’s breakdown included:
- 4,091 people “identified having a dispute in OMR issue”
- 1,212 persons identified “as tainted in the category of rank jumping and out of panel but appointed”.
Additional reporting by Subhankar Chowdhury