Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court on Tuesday scanned affidavits of some primary school teachers and decided to stick to his earlier order in regard to 143 teachers.
The judge asked the education department to terminate the service of all 143 candidates with immediate effect and stop their salaries.
Earlier, the judge had held that 263 primary school teachers were appointed illegally and asked the education department to terminate their service.
All 263 teachers moved the Supreme Court, which asked them to approach the high court again.
Of the 263, 143 teachers had filed affidavits before Justice Gangopadhyay. The judge went through some of the affidavits on Wednesday and concluded that they were all the same. The judge held that his previous decision was right and asked the state to terminate their service.
In September 2022, Justice Gangopadhyay had ordered the state to terminate the service of 263 candidates as their appointments were based on fake recommendations.
The court had held that the candidates were recruited bypassing those who were placed above them on the merit list. Also, the recommendations had been made after the expiry of the merit list.
The 263 candidates had moved the apex court and said Justice Gangopdhyay had not given them a proper hearing before ordering the termination of their service.
The Supreme Court sent them back to Calcutta High Court.
On Wednesday, 143 of them approached the court and all of them stand to lose their jobs.
Earlier, 54 primary school teachers (among the 263) had moved the court of Justice Gangopadhyay. After scanning their affidavits, the judge had upheld his decision in 53 cases. One teacher kept the job but was asked to pay a fine of Rs 10,000.
On Wednesday, of the 53, the judge asked the state education department to reinstate another two — Ashish Kumar and another person.
After reconsidering their cases, the judge said he found they got the jobs legally.
In yet another related event, an advocate, Sudipto Roy, told Justice Gangopadhyay that his client, Shilpa Chakrabarty, a 2014 TET candidate, had received a call on December 6, 2017, asking her to meet the then primary education board chairman to get a job.
After hearing this, Justice Gangopadhyay directed the CBI to include this allegation in the ambit of its probe into alleged irregularities in school recruitment.