A Calcutta High Court division bench on Wednesday saved the jobs of 32,000 primary school teachers and said that so many could not be sacked for the alleged fault of a handful.

The bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra said it was “disinclined to uphold” the May 2023 order of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay (now the BJP MP of Tamluk) scrapping the jobs as an “assessment of the data does not indicate systemic cheating”.

The court said jobs taken away after nine years of service would “indisputably cause insurmountable inconvenience to the appellants, and their survival, along with their family members, would be at stake”.

“A group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to damage the entire system,” Justice Chakraborty and Justice Mitra said in their signed order.

The state government heaved a sigh of relief. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said: “I am happy that the teachers have their jobs. You cannot keep taking away jobs at the drop of a hat. We should not be taking away jobs. Rather, we should give jobs.”

Education minister Bratya Basu hailed the “compassion” shown by the division bench.

The high court order said: “For cancellation of the entire examination, there must be, as a rule, possibility of systemic malaise as borne out by materials on record. Assessment of the data does not indicate systemic cheating. It also needs to be mentioned that during the period of service rendered by the appellants, there had been no allegation regarding the integrity or efficiency of those teachers.”

It added: “It is not a case that instructions were given to the examiners to give higher marks or that the candidates who paid money had been given high marks in the interview. A group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to damage the entire system, and more so when it cannot be ruled out that innocent teachers would also suffer great ignominy and stigma. The service of the appointees cannot also be terminated only on the basis of an ongoing criminal proceeding”.

Justice Gangopadhyay had said that the appointments were cancelled because the teachers lacked the necessary training, which was mandatory in the 2014 TET (Teachers’ Eligibility Test), based on which the candidates were recruited.

He had also said that manipulations were likely to have taken place in the final marks weightage given for appointments to untrained candidates by assigning fictitious marks in aptitude tests that were allegedly never held. The division said this was a "purported finding".

The division bench did not see any “corrupt practice” in the appointments.

“Findings arrived at by the investigating authority would not reveal that the appointed candidates were involved in any corrupt practices. Upon investigation, it was ascertained by CBI that irregularities exist in respect of 264 candidates, who were given grace marks and were identified,” Wednesday’s order says.

The division bench explained why it refused to “interfere with” the jobs of 32,000 primary teachers (Classes I to V).

“Additionally, 96 candidates who did not secure qualifying marks were appointed, and they were also identified. Subsequently, the said 96 candidates were terminated, but they are still continuing in service on the strength of an order passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.

“In view of such identification, the allegation of fraud and corruption pertaining to the entire recruitment process is not sustainable and the appointment of the 32,000 teachers cannot be interfered with,” the order said.

The division bench drew attention to the need to exercise caution. “It is the impact of the action that would define the nature of the procedure that is to be adopted. The effect of any direction for re-examination at this stage would have a dissimilar impact upon the appointees. Any such direction for re-examination would fail to secure fair play inaction.”

The order said: “A job taken away after about nine years of service would indisputably cause insurmountable inconvenience to the appellants and their survival, along with their family members, would be at stake. In such circumstances and considering the enormity of the impact, we are not inclined to uphold the cancellation of the appointment of the 32,000 teachers, who have worked in the post for a long period.”

The 32,000 teachers were recruited by the state primary education board in 2016 and have been engaged since the 2016-17 academic year. These teachers had written the TET in 2015.

Since the Right to Education Act was enacted in 2009, the National Council for Technical Education (NCTE) has been insisting on recruiting candidates with a diploma in elementary education as teachers in primary schools. These teachers were trained in the ODL (open and distance learning) mode after 2017, the state primary board had said.

Among the candidates who cracked TET-2015, the CBI had published a list of 296 candidates whose aptitude tests had not been taken.

Justice Gangopadhyay had called 10 of the 296 candidates to his court to question them and said that the mandatory aptitude test was bypassed for most candidates. The division bench did not accept this contention of the single bench.

Gangopadhay told reporters in Delhi on Wednesday that the division bench had the authority to give an order it deemed fit, and added that he would comment after going through the order in detail.