New Delhi: The Calcutta High Court on Monday cancelled the entire 2016 recruitment panel for school teachers constituted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSCC) in the case of jobs scam. The court dismissed nearly 24,000 jobs.
During the hearing, a division bench comprising Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi said that school teachers who were recruited illegally (blank OMR sheet) would need to give back their salaries within four weeks. The district magistrate has been tasked with collecting the money from these teachers.
The cancelled recruitment panel includes all appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff, hired through an WBSC entrance examination in 2016, to various state-government-sponsored and aided schools in Bengal. The bench also ordered the re-evaluation of as many as 23 lakh OMR sheets (test paper) of the recruitment entrance exam that had been conducted, News18 reported.
It rejected a request by some appellants for a stay on the order. The bench also directed the CBI to undertake further investigation into the matter concerning the appointment process and submit a report in three months. The WBSSC has been asked to initiate a fresh appointment process.
Notably, More than 23 lakh candidates appeared for the 2016 State Level Selection Test (SLST) conducted by the WBSSC for over 24,000 vacant posts. Hundreds of job aspirants, waiting outside the court premises for the verdict, rejoiced as soon as it was delivered. The High Court had concluded the hearing in the case on March 20 and the division bench received the judgment. The CBI was probing the case on an earlier order by the court. The federal agency had arrested former Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in 2022 for his alleged links in the scam.
