The hearing of appeals against an order for termination of jobs of teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided secondary schools ended before a special division bench of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday.
The division bench comprising Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Babbar Rashidi said the verdict would be delivered later.
In May 2022, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had asked the CBI and ED to probe alleged irregularities in the appointment of Group C and Group D school employees.
In February and March 2023 Justice Gangopadhyay asked the School Service Commission to cancel the appointments of the non-teaching employees who were recruited illegally and fill up the vacancies from the list of genuine candidates.
Later in 2023, Justice Biswajit Basu of the same court ordered the termination of some secondary school teachers following similar complaints.
Against all these termination orders, the state government, the SSC, and those who stood to lose their jobs moved the division bench headed by Justice Subrata Talukdar.
The division bench upheld the order passed by Justice Gangopadhyay.
Then government, SSC and the aggrieved teachers moved the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court sent the cases back to the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court and asked him to set up a special division bench to hear the appeals.
Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam constituted the bench headed by Justice Basak to dispose of the appeals. This bench started hearing the appeals on December 5, 2023.
On Wednesday, Justice Basak said during discussions with the lawyers: “If it is proved that undeserving candidates have been appointed through irregularities, then they should lose their jobs. We cannot allow misuse of public money.”
Advocate Pramit Kumar Ray, who represented some of the terminated Group D employees, said: “Our first contention was that the SSC has admittedly destroyed all the records of the examination (OMR sheets). The second contention was that records recovered by the CBI are admittedly corrupt because the person from whom the records have been recovered is himself charged with forgery of electronic records.”
“Third contention is that the writ petitioners (claiming to be deserving candidates) have come after the expiry of the panel, clearly indicating it is a politically motivated litigation.”
The commission, which conducted a written test for the recruitment of the teaching and non-teaching staff in 2015, has allegedly destroyed copies of the candidates’ OMR sheets.
The SSC had hired a Noida-based company to evaluate OMR sheets of tests
for recruitment of teachers and non-teaching employees for government-aided
schools.
Ray said the CBI had arrested Niladri Das, a former vice-president of the company, in March 2023 following allegations of manipulation of marks on OMR sheets and manipulation in preparation of the panel in conspiracy with officials of the commission.
The CBI has recovered scanned images of the OMR sheets from the hard disc of the company while submitting purported proof of irregularities before the court.
Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, appearing for the writ petitioners, said: “We have prayed that all the illegal appointments be scrapped. All these appointments are tainted. There is no political motivation behind the litigation.”