West Bengal School Service Commission has announced a tentative list of waitlisted candidates for Group-D posts to fill vacancies in government-aided schools that emerge after the termination of “erroneous recommendations” of 1,911 candidates.
The commission has said “the list is subject to modification and availability of suitable candidates” as it has to detect whether there are cases of manipulations in the OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets also among the waitlisted candidates.
The board has come up with a list of 1,444 candidates in the first phase in compliance with a directive of Calcutta High Court.
The commission has said in its Saturday night notice that the list is “in no way to be treated as a final one” as they may have to modify the list.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had on Friday ordered the commission to interview the waitlisted listed candidates after verifying their OMR sheets.
A notice signed by the commission’s chairman, Siddhartha Majumdar, says: “The final list of eligible waitlisted candidates for counselling shall be published in due time.”
According to the notice, the list will be governed by the condition that says waitlisted candidates who would be called to attend the counselling process, if found to be related to any irregularity, including manipulation in their OMR sheets, “shall be barred from appearing in the counselling process and shall have their candidature cancelled forthwith without any notice”.
These candidates wrote the third regional-level selection test in 2016.
Manipulation of marks means the candidate’s marks in the selection test results stored in the commission’s server do not match the response captured on the OMR sheet, details of which were retrieved from a hard disc, said a commission official.
An official of the commission said the CBI, which is probing the alleged corruption in the recruitment, had earlier briefed the court that the state secondary education board had appointed 4,487 candidates in Group D posts following recommendations from the SSC and, of this, manipulation of marks was traced in 2,823 candidates.
“Out of these 2,823 candidates, 1,911 had been recommended for appointment and their recommendations have been withdrawn. Now, we have to assess whether the waitlisted candidates include the remaining 912 names from the 2,823 candidates,” said a commission official.
The commission will come up with a list of more figures of waitlisted candidates as 1,911 recommendations have been withdrawn.
“It will take time for the commission to detect whether the waitlisted candidates include the 912 from the pool of 2,823 candidates. Once we are through, then the schedule of counselling will be announced,” he said.
“If we don’t fill the vacancy arising from the termination of recommendation of 1,911 Group D employees, the schools will face difficulties,” said a WBSSC official.
On September 28, the commission said it started a process of ascertaining the exact number of Group C and D posts available in government-aided schools a day after education minister Bratya Basu said the commission had filed an affidavit in the high court stating that the education department was ready to recruit “deserving” candidates as teachers and Group C and D employees.
Non-teaching staff who work in positions like peons and laboratory attendants are called Group-D staff in schools.