The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case on Thursday that might determine whether the recruitment of 23,123 teaching and non-teaching staff in Bengal’s government-aided schools was valid.

On April 22, a Calcutta High Court division bench cancelled the appointment of over 23,000 teachers and non-teaching staff at the secondary and higher secondary levels through the 2016 state-level selection test after alleged illegalities were found during a CBI probe.

The Supreme Court, which imposed an interim stay on the termination order in early May, is scheduled to hear the case on Thursday.

The apex court will study a state government petition that says the high court’s ruling would cause a “huge vacuum in the state schools” and bring the education system to “a stand-still”.

The chairman of the school service commission, Siddhartha Majumdar, said the apex court is expected to hear the case in the first half of the day.

An official of the state education department said the state government had not been able to hold any recruitment test over the past eight years at the secondary and higher secondary levels and any order to axe the services of so many teaching and non-teaching staff would lead to a significant vacuum in government schools.

“Our main contention would be that the high court, instead of segregating the valid appointments from the allegedly illegal ones, erroneously set aside the selection process in its entirety,” the official said.

On April 22, a Calcutta High Court division bench, led by Justice Debanshu Basak, cancelled the appointments of over 23,000 teachers and non-teaching staff posted at government-aided schools, saying it was impossible to segregate the illegal appointments from the legal ones.

On April 22, the commission’s chairperson told reporters: “We told the (high) court that there were complaints of anomalies about the recruitment of 5,000 teaching and non-teaching staff. This we ascertained from what the CBI has told us.”

The apex court had made it clear that it was not in favour of a blanket cancellation of the recruitments but would prefer to segregate the illegally appointed candidates from the genuine ones.

On Thursday, the apex court is expected to hear the arguments of all those who have been parties to the case — the Bengal government, West Bengal School Service Commission, original petitioners before the high court who had not been selected for appointment, persons whose appointment has been cancelled by the high court and the CBI.