In a partial reprieve to the 1,911 Group-D school staff whose appointments were terminated by the Calcutta High Court, the Division Bench of Justices Subrata Talukdar and Supratim Bhattacharya awarded an interim stay on the Single Bench order to return their salaries in installments.

No stay was, however, granted on the direction to withdraw recruitment recommendation or on any other parts of the order passed by Justice Abhijit Ganguly last week. Earlier this week, the Division Bench concluded the hearing of a separate petition from the 803 teachers at secondary level who were identified by the SSC as recruited in irregular manner and has kept its order in reserve.

The developments in court followed a submission by the state School Service Commission (SSC) where it stated: “It took the Commission a year and a half to become Yudhishtira. It did not happen overnight”.

“A lot of mistakes were committed in the past which we are now trying to rectify. An act of corruption shouldn’t tarnish the image of an institution for good,” Dr Sutanu Patra, appearing for the SSC, argued.

Aggrieved job losers from the 2017 SSC panel had challenged the Single Bench order on grounds that the affected people were not given any opportunity to defend themselves at the time of passing of the order. Counsels representing the petitioners argued that the Optical Marks Recognition (OMR) sheets acquired by the SSC from its agent NYSA through the CBI were merely “secondary evidences”, since the originals have been destroyed by the commission, and hence cannot be treated as the basis of ascertaining irregularity.

Referring to a Supreme Court order, the petitioners stated that there are no provisions of returning salaries which were earned in exchange of the work they have put in all these years.

The petitioners further argued that the term of the panel in question has expired on 4 May, 2019 and to conduct fresh recruitment from the waiting list of that panel to fill up the newly created 1911 vacancies as directed by the Single Bench, would be a violation of the state SSC Act, 1997. The Commission isn’t letting the court know that there are Supreme Court directions which forbid recruitments from expired panels, they maintained.

Alleging that the current SSC authorities are “keen to save their own back” by passing the scam responsibility on to its previous counterparts, the job losers submitted that the Commission flouted norms of natural justice by accepting the CBI documents at their face value and turning a deaf ear to what they have to say.

Responding to those arguments, the Commission submitted: “The petitioners are unaware that the petitions over recruitment irregularities are being heard by the court since 2021 and over 30 orders have been passed so far in this regard. We took a year and a half to become Yudhishtira (walk the path of truth). It did not happen overnight.”

Arguing that the challenge petition cannot be maintained since the CBI has not been added as a party to it, the SSC stated: “The NYSA is not a third party, it’s an extended arm of the Commission. This we have stated in our affidavit. Since the OMR sheets are digitally assessed by computers, hence the CBI data can be considered primary evidence.”

The matter is scheduled to be heard next on 3 March.