Supreme Court stays Calcutta HC order cancelling over 25,000 school jobs, slams Bengal govt

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Calcutta high court’s order to terminate 25,000 teaching and non-teaching posts in state-run and state-aided schools of West Bengal.

The decision came as a relief to thousands of individuals whose jobs were in jeopardy following the high court’s ruling on April 22 that invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools of West Bengal.

The apex court, however, refused to stay the CBI probe into the alleged school recruitment scam.

Hearing a series of petitions challenging the high court’s decision, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that if the taint against nearly 8,000 teachers investigated by CBI is finally proved, the order of the high court will apply to the affected staff and they will have to refund their salaries.

“The public job is so scarce…. Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes. This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?” the CJI asked the lawyers representing the state government.

The bench said the state government has nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities and asked about its availability.

“Either you have the data or you do not have it…You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control,” the bench told the state government’s lawyers.

The West Bengal government had challenged the Calcutta high court order, saying it cancelled the appointments “arbitrarily”.

The state in its appeal filed through advocate Astha Sharma said: “The high court has proceeded in a cursory manner to cancel all appointments of teachers and non-teaching staff, in utter disregard to the fact that the same will lead to a huge vacuum in the state schools, unless new selection process is completed by the SSC, especially when the new academic sessions is on its brim, leading to the students being adversely impacted.”