Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the high court on Friday asked the West Benagl School Service Commission (WBSSC) to cancel the job recommendations of 785 Group C employees in government-aided schools by the end of the day because they got their jobs through manipulation of marks.
Also during the day, the judge directly cancelled the appointment of another 57 Group C employees as the commission failed to trace their letters of recommendation or documents pertaining to their counselling.
The commission uploaded on its website the two lists of terminated Group C employees, in compliance with the court’s order, around 5pm.
The commission through an affidavit informed the court on Friday that they had recommended 785 candidates for appointment from among 3,115 candidates whose marks had allegedly been tampered with.
It emerged during the hearing that 57 candidates had got jobs without the mandatory recommendation from the WBSSC and without any counselling.
The judge ordered that the 842 Group C employees (785 plus 57) would not be allowed to enter schools from Monday and would have to return the amount they got as salary since joining the service.
Justice Gangopadhyay had in February given an identical order with respect to 1,911 Group D employees, who, too, got their jobs through manipulation of marks.
Group C employees are lower division clerks who prepare files, draw salary bills and do other office jobs.
On Thursday, the SSC had uploaded on its website the OMR sheets of 3,115 candidates whose marks in the selection test results stored on the commission’s server are not tallying with the marks stored on the hard disc of the agency that was engaged to evaluate the sheets.
“As for the 3,115 candidates, their marks stored on the WBSSC server are more in most cases than what was stored on the agency’s hard disc,” a commission official said.
Among the 3,115 candidates were the 785 whose recommendation for appointments was terminated by the court on Friday.
WBSSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar said on Friday the 57 candidates were among the 3,115 whose OMR sheets had been uploaded by the commission.
Enforcement Directorate arrests Trinamul leader
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested Shantanu Banerjee, a youth Trinamul Congress leader from Hooghly district, for his alleged involvement in the irregularities in appointments in state-run government schools.