The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea by terminated Scheduled Tribe (ST) school teachers challenging changes to the West Bengal School Service Commission’s rules for the upcoming recruitment tests, the first of which is scheduled for Sunday.
The selection tests are scheduled for September 7 (for secondary level teachers) and September 14 (for higher secondary level teachers).
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Alok Aradhe declined to set aside a Calcutta High Court judgment that upheld the revised rules.
The appeal, filed by Bharat Saren and other ST aspirants, contested the reduction of the maximum age for ST candidates from 55 to 42 years under the 2025 rules. The petitioners argued that the apex court, while quashing the 2016 appointment process, had allowed SC/ST candidates to participate in the fresh recruitment with age relaxation and other concessions.
On April 3, the Supreme Court terminated 17,206 teachers recruited through what it described as a “vitiated” 2016 SSC examination process.
Filed through advocate Nikilesh Ramachandran, the petition alleged that categories were restructured and vacancies redistributed, reducing the number of seats originally reserved for ST candidates in 2016. “Artificial new posts have been created for the general category while the proportion for STs stands curtailed, defeating the constitutional guarantee of adequate representation under Articles 15(4) and 16(4),” it stated.
The petitioners had also claimed the high court failed to distinguish between tainted and untainted candidates.
“The retrospective imposition of new eligibility norms nearly a decade after appointments were made imperils livelihoods and is manifestly arbitrary,” the petition stated.