Today, the Supreme Court of India set aside the interim order of the Calcutta High Court that directed the West Bengal Board of Primary Education to conduct fresh selection for 32,000 teacher posts before the end of August 2023.
The division bench of J.K. Maheshwari and Justice K.V. Viswanathan also asked the Calcutta High Court to decide the appeal pertaining to School Jobs for Cash scam at the earliest.
“Considering the fact that this a matter relating to selection and appointment of large number of assistant teachers, we hope and trust that such controversy ought to be decided at the earliest. Therefore, we request the High Court to expedite the writ appeal.” The Apex Court directed.
Earlier, on 12th May, the single-headed bench of Justice Gangopadhyay had cancelled the appointments of the teachers saying he could smell "stinking rats" in the the recruitments scam known as the school jobs for cash scam.
The single judge was hearing matters related to illegal recruitment in schools in West Bengal.
During the hearing, the bench was told that during the recruitment process held in 2016, thousands of "untrained" candidates were appointed despite their scoring less in the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) and other counts.
The single judge had inferred that to recruit such candidates who scored less, they were given extra marks or maximum marks in aptitude tests which were shown to be conducted only on paper.
The judge also noted that no selection committee was constituted for the purpose of selecting eligible candidates. Instead, this was done by an outside agency, a third party that was not at all a part of the Education Board, the Court found.
This was in clear violation of the Recruitment Rules, the single judge had observed.
He had, therefore, cancelled the appointments of all the 32,000 candidates, who were found to have been untrained at the time of the recruitment process in 2016.
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