A forum of teachers, who have been referred to as 'untainted' by the West Bengal School Service Commission and are currently working at their schools on an interim basis following a Supreme Court order, on Friday said none of its members have applied for fresh recruitment examinations.
Deserving Teachers' Rights Forum spokesperson Chinmoy Mondal said none of the 15,403 teachers, who were marked as not specifically tainted by the WBSSC on its list sent to the offices of district inspectors, have applied for fresh tests for which a notification was issued on May 30.
The written examinations for the fresh recruitment have been scheduled for the first week of September.
"We are determined not to appear for another test again after clearing the 2016 SSC tests and working in our respective workplaces for these years," he said.
The apex court had on April 3 invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in government-sponsored and -aided schools in West Bengal, calling the entire selection process of the SSC in 2016 “vitiated and tainted”.
The court directed the state government to initiate a fresh recruitment process by May 31 and complete it by December 31.
Later, the top court temporarily extended the services of the 'untainted' teachers of state-run and state-aided schools in West Bengal.
On May 30, the WBSSC issued a notification for the recruitment of 35,726 assistant teachers in classes 9-10 and 11-12 in state-aided and government-sponsored schools, in adherence to the Supreme Court's directive.
The court asked the state government to file a compliance affidavit on the initiation of the recruitment process on or before May 31 which the state did.
A senior WBSSC official said, "The notification had been issued as per the directives of the Supreme Court. We have to wait till the last date. We cannot specify how many among those marked as untainted have already applied for fresh recruitment tests." State Education Minister Bratya Basu said in a post on x handle that a total of 3,25,342 candidates logged in for teaching posts till 6 pm on July 2.
In view of the encouraging response, the last date for submission of applications has been extended to July 15, he said.
In the 2016 SSC recruitment tests, the last time such notices had been issued and subsequently mired in controversy, over 3 lakh candidates had applied for teaching jobs, the SSC official said.
Another Deserving Teachers' Rights Forum office-bearer Mehboob Mondal said, "We have nothing to say about the number of applicants. All we can say is those who had passed the 2016 exams cannot sit with their students who have graduated, done masters and now are aspiring to be teachers." After the Supreme Court had declared the entire 2016 recruitment process as "tainted and vitiated", the commission and the education department should not have undertaken the process in such a hurry, Chinmoy Mondal said.
"Since the matter is already pending before the SC and fresh rounds of hearing are scheduled later this month, the state could have avoided the recruitment drive in consultation with legal experts and come up with a verifiable list of untainted teachers or they could have posted the OMR sheets in public," he said.
Referring to the April 3 verdict of the SC and the subsequent order on April 17, the SSC had earlier said, "The commission and the government of West Bengal have already applied for review of the said judgment and order and this exercise is strictly subject to the outcome of the review petition and guidelines of the Hon'ble court to be followed by the commission and the government."
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