The education department on Tuesday appointed a new chairman of the school service commission, a day after Calcutta High Court expressed its displeasure over the role of the commission’s chairman and wondered how he could continue in his chair.
The department has appointed Siddhartha Majumdar, an associate professor of economics of City College, on Amherst Street, as the new chairman, replacing Subha Shankar Sarkar.
An order issued on Tuesday evening said Majumdar, who had served as chairman of the college service commission from 2011 to 2014 during Bratya Basu’s previous tenure as Bengal’s education minister, will continue as the chairman of the central school service commission in addition to his normal duties until further orders.
Sarkar, the vice-chancellor of Netaji Subhas Open University, in addition to his duties as the VC, was appointed the commission’s chairman in December 2020.
The high court on Monday expressed its reservations about the role of the commission’s chairman while hearing a case pertaining to recruitment through a written examination held by the commission.
Last June, the high court had slapped an interim stay on recruitment of teachers at the upper primary level after saying “the court feels there is lack of transparency and there are irregularities in drawing up the merit list”.
An official of the department said the replacement became imperative for the commission to be run effectively without getting dragged into frequent litigation.
“The court is repeatedly passing adverse orders. The teaching aspirants are staging agitations frequently in front of the commission’s office at Salt Lake, alleging lack of transparency in the recruitment process. All these are earning the department a bad reputation,” he said.
Majumdar will assume charge on Thursday.
In mid-August 2021, the department had appointed Jadavpur University pro-vice-chancellor Chiranjib Bhattacharjee as president of the state higher secondary council replacing Mahua Das, three weeks after students’ grievances against higher secondary results triggered a backlash across the state.