Thousands of sacked Group C and Group D staff from government and aided schools in Bengal are facing financial ruin after the high court stayed the state government’s decision to provide them monthly allowances.

Justice Amrita Sinha issued the interim stay order on Friday while hearing two petitions challenging the allowance scheme. The state had announced ₹25,000 monthly payments for terminated Group C employees and ₹20,000 for Group D staff, effective from April.

“Once the Supreme Court decided the issue of illegal appointment conclusively and opined that the appointments were results of fraud, no person who was the beneficiary of a fraudulent act of the statutory authority ought to be provided any support, that too, from the public exchequer,” Justice Sinha stated in her order.

Families face crisis

The affected Group C employees, who were earning ₹35,000 monthly salaries, now have no income to support their families.

“We were looking forward to receiving the allowance. Unlike the teachers, we have not been extended any relaxation that guarantees we will continue to get a monthly salary till December,” said Amit Mandal, a terminated Group C employee. “In the absence of any financial allowance, it will be difficult to run my family.”

Mandal’s family depended on his job. “From buying medicines for my parents to buying grocery items, everything depended on my salary. The monthly allowance would have been a great help,” he said.

Bikram Polley, another affected Group C employee whose wife is a homemaker, echoed similar concerns. “My wife and parents depended on my earnings. My parents do not draw any pension. We wanted the state government to pay the allowance fairly,” he said.

Mass job loss

The crisis stems from the Supreme Court’s April 3 decision to terminate 25,753 teaching and non-teaching employees because, it said, the entire 2016 recruitment process by the school service commission was “vitiated” by fraud and irregularities.

In a subsequent order on April 17, the apex court allowed 15,403 teachers classified as “not specifically found to be tainted” to continue working and drawing salaries until December 31. However, no such relief was extended to non-teaching staff, with the court arguing that the scope of illegalities was “substantially high” in their appointments.

The terminated employees argue that not all of them were involved in fraudulent activities. Based on CBI reports, they claim 3,394 non-teaching staff should be considered “untainted”.

The 3,394 figure is derived from earlier Calcutta High Court orders in 2023 by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay (who is now a BJP MP), who had cancelled job recommendations for 1,911 Group D candidates with fake recommendation letters and 785 Group C employees who got jobs through mark manipulation.

“Since the names of 3,394 non-teaching staff did not feature among those whose services had been terminated by the court, it was clear that we are untainted candidates,” said Mandal, who was part of a delegation that met the chief secretary at Nabanna on April 27.

“We wanted the state government to give assistance to the untainted candidates only. But the state did not listen,” he said.

An education department official said the state decided to provide allowances to all 8,000-odd terminated non-teaching employees because the Supreme Court’s April 17 order did not distinguish between tainted and untainted staff among those terminated on April 3.

“We have in our petitions before the Supreme Court challenged the sacking of both teaching and non-teaching staff. Till the disposal of the petition, we wanted to give the sacked Group C and Group D employees a monthly allowance,” the official said.

The affected employees had expected the court to stay the implementation precisely because the state government decided to give allowances to all terminated staff without making distinctions between those who were involved in fraud and those who
were not.