The Bengal government has asked the school service commission to start a fresh recruitment process immediately but the commission wants clarifications from the Supreme Court before getting on with it.

The commission wants to be clear about whether the court would want all 22 lakh candidates who had written the 2016 state-level selection test (SLST) to be offered a chance to take the fresh test.

It will also ask the apex court whether the age relaxation offered to candidates should be extended to everyone or only to those who lost their jobs even though their recruitment process was not “tainted”.

Over 22 lakh candidates wrote the 2016 test, based on which around 26,000
teaching and non-teaching staff were given jobs in state-aided schools.

“We need to know whether as many candidates would be asked to participate in the fresh recruitment process,” SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar told a news conference on Thursday.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Calcutta High Court order dismissing over 25,000 teaching and non-teaching staff working in government-aided schools in Bengal, saying the “entire selection process has been
vitiated and tainted beyond resolution”.

The apex court order spoke of “manipulations and frauds on a large scale” and an attempted “cover-up” that “dented the selection process beyond repair and partial
redemption”.

The court said candidates not specifically found to be tainted but who also stand terminated would be eligible to participate, with appropriate age relaxation, in the next round of recruitments to fill the vacancies necessitated by the mass dismissal.

“The commission wants to know whether the age relaxation would be granted to all 22 lakh candidates if they write the test,” Majumdar said.

What he also said suggested there may not be an early end to the impasse.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had mentioned completing “the process” in three months on Thursday but that may be an unrealistic deadline, conversations with several officials suggested.

“It depends on the number of applications that we receive. If we are to invite 22 lakh applications, just processing the applications will take a few months. Then, the state government has to approve rules based on which the examination and the interviews would have to be held,” Majumdar said.

An SSC official said of the 22 lakh applicants, 2.91 lakh candidates wrote the tests for teaching positions.

The remaining candidates were for the Group C and D jobs.

“We also have to know whether the recruitment exercise for the teaching and non-teaching staff would have to be held at the same time,” an official said.

The commission submitted to the Supreme Court in mid-February that 5,303 candidates were appointed illegally as teaching and non-teaching staff in secondary and higher secondary sections of government-aided schools.

The apex court accused the SSC of attempting to “cover up” the irregularities,
which made it difficult for the court to ascertain who were deserving and undeserving candidates.

Majumdar said: “We furnished whatever evidence we had on this. We could not satisfy the court with our explanations.”

Education minister Bratya Basu told reporters the apex court had ordered those identified as “tainted” to return the salaries they had drawn so far, and spared those not tainted.

“So, it is not that the SSC could not segregate deserving and undeserving,” Basu said.