Mita Mukherjee

The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside the Calcutta High Court directive for a CBI inquiry into creation of supernumerary posts of teaching and non-teaching staff in state-aided schools in 2022 bringing a major relief to the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal.

The top court, however, clarified today that the order was limited only to the creation of supernumerary posts and does not interfere with the investigation being held by the Central agency into the school job scam centering the 2016 recruitment.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna said that the High Court was not “justified” in ordering the CBI investigation.

The posts were created by the Bengal government when the case challenging the appointments of teachers and non-teaching staff made by the state School Service Commission on the basis of a recruitment test held in 2016 was pending.  

The Calcutta High Court had earlier described the creation of more than 6800 supernumerary posts as ‘illegal” and stated that the move was taken to regularize appointments made outside the selection process.

The top court today said that a supernumerary post is a temporary or additional position created to accommodate a candidate who may be entitled to hold the post, but could not be recruited due to unavailability of such particular posts.

The top court bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar considered the observations made in the High Court’s order in which it mentioned that the state government had passed a cabinet decision approved by the state governor for the creation of supernumerary posts to accommodate the alleged illegal appointments.

The Bengal cabinet approved the decision in this regard in 2022 when the case challenging the state School Service Commission recruitment was pending before the High Court, the top court said.

Referring to constitutional provisions, the Supreme Court observed that any advice tendered by the ministers, council of ministers to the President or Governor cannot become a subject of inquiry in any court.

According to the top court it was not “justified” in referring the issue creation of supernumerary posts to CBI and therefore the direction was set aside.

The state government had suffered a blow following an order of the Supreme Court on April 3 cancelling the appointments of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff of state-aided schools saying that the entire selection was marred with large-scale irregularities.

Also read: Bengal Board seeks ‘modification’ in SC order annulling over 25,000 school jobs