Mita Mukherjee

The Supreme Court on Thursday said that teachers of state-aided schools in Bengal whose jobs were cancelled earlier this month due to irregularities in the recruitment process can continue to teach till the fresh selection process is completed bringing temporary relief to the state government and the deserving teachers who lost their jobs.

The court, however, said that the relief is only meant for “untainted” teachers who are not linked to any irregularity during the investigation into the 2016 recruitment process on the basis of which they were appointed.

 However, the court made it clear that the relief will not apply to Group C and Group D staff, whose appointments were cancelled as the number of “tainted” candidates in this group are high.

The court passed the order considering that students studying in the state-aided schools should not suffer. The relief is also meant only for teachers teaching in class IX, X, XI and XII.

According to the top court order, the state government of Bengal and the West Bengal School Service Commission will have to complete the fresh recruitment process for the posts of assistant teachers of Classes IX, X, XI and XII by December 31 this year. A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar said that the state government and the SSC will have to publish the advertisements for the fresh recruitment process by May 31. The state government and the SSC were directed to file an affidavit before May 31, producing the advertisement. In case this deadline is not met, an appropriate order will be passed.  

Upholding an order of Calcutta High Court the Supreme Court on April 3 cancelled the appointments of 25,573 teachers and non-teaching employees declaring the entire recruitment process of 2016 “tainted’ and lacking credibility bringing a big setback for the Mamata Banerjee government. Though she had assured the ‘deserving” sacked teachers that she will stand by their side.

 After the announcement of the Supreme Court order today, Mamata said that her government had appealed to the court to permit the teachers not found to be tainted to continue in service till the end of the academic year or until the process of fresh appointments to such posts is completed.

“ I am happy that the court has allowed the deserving teachers to continue service till December 31… Now there is no problem paying the salaries to them… We are confident we will be able to complete the recruitment process as directed by the court….” the chief minister said.

The top court had said on April 3 that the entire selection process of 2016 was “vitiated” and “ tainted” beyond resolution. It also said that there had been large-scale frauds and manipulations in the appointment process.

The deserving sacked teachers had been agitating in various parts of the state demanding that since they have not lost their jobs for any fault of their own, the state government should find out some mechanism which can enable them to return to their work. Many of them have started indefinite strikes.

After the termination order of the court, the sacked teachers stopped attending schools creating a severe crisis of teachers particularly in Classes IX, X, XI and XII.

The process of evaluation of answer scripts of Classes X and XII examination of the state secondary and higher secondary boards were also affected due to an uncertainty on whether the sacked teachers who have been assigned to  examine the scripts are eligible to do the job or not.