West Bengal Teacher Scam 2016: The Supreme Court affirmed the Calcutta High Court’s ruling, which revoked the appointment of over 25,000 teachers and non-teaching employees under the West Bengal School Service Commission, causing a significant embarrassment to the Mamata Banerjee administration in West Bengal. The Supreme Court declared that the validity and integrity of the entire selection process had been “denuded” and that it was “vitiated by manipulation and fraud”.
West Bengal Teacher Recruitment Scam 2016
A bench composed of Justice Sanjay Kumar and Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna came to the conclusion that the recruitment procedure in question had serious flaws. According to the court’s ruling, the appointments’ integrity had been so severely damaged by recruitment-process manipulations that they could not be upheld. The justices stressed that the appointments were void since the entire selection process was corrupted and compromised.
The court’s ruling upholds the April 2024 ruling of the Calcutta High Court. It had revoked the appointments of more than 25,000 employees at a number of West Bengali institutions. The Supreme Court’s decision included a directive that all those nominated during the contentious hiring process would be removed from their jobs. However, as a relief to those impacted, the court made it clear that the people would not be obliged to refund any salary or perks that they had previously received. More News.
Important Points of the Judgement
- The Supreme Court declared the 2016 SSC panel, which included 25,753 (rounded to 26,000) jobs, to be “rigged.”
- Within three months, a new recruiting procedure must be finished. Qualified applicants from the panel that was scrapped may reappear.
- Workers may return to their previous roles if they so want after leaving previous government posts to join through the 2016 recruitment.
- The bench stated that because original OMR sheets and answer scripts were missing. It was impossible to distinguish between worthy applicants and those who obtained positions falsely.
Allegations of bribery, rank manipulation, and appointments without appropriate examinations were made during the SSC 2016 recruiting. Investigations turned up cases when applicants filled out blank response sheets and were hired. In its April 2024 ruling, the Calcutta High Court declared the entire procedure to be void. They mandated that fired employees return their pay plus 12% interest.
The Case
The lawsuit concerns the hiring of teachers and non-teaching staff for state-run and state-aided schools. It happened in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC). A startling 25,753 employment letters were sent out. It was in spite of the fact that 23 lakh people applied for 24,640 positions. These appointments were eventually cancelled after the Calcutta High Court identified anomalies in the recruitment process. It also included rank-jumping and tampering with OMR sheets.
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