West Bengal Recruitment Scam: SC Stays Calcutta High Court Order cancelling all Recruitment

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, May 7: In a huge relief to the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal and some 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff, the Supreme Court on Tuesday put on hold the Calcutta High Court’s April 22 order cancelling the appointments.

The court said the Central Bureau of Investigation will continue to look into the matter but there will be no coercive action against candidates or officials. The High Court had cancelled the appointments, pointing to the irregularities committed during the recruitment. Several Trinamool leaders, including former education minister Partha Chatterjee, and former officials are in jail in connection with the alleged recruitment scam.

The High Court asked the teachers to return their salaries with 12 per cent interest within six weeks.  The bench — formed on the order of the Supreme Court — also asked the state’s School Service Commission to begin a fresh appointment process.

But the move, which at one stroke made 26,000 teachers and non-teaching staff jobless, generated immense public anger. On social media, many complained that innocent people were being punished for the misdoings of a few. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which challenged the High Court order, is hoping to reap the benefits of public mood in the ongoing general election.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra put tough questions to the West Bengal government while hearing its appeal against a Calcutta High Court’s April 22 order.

Terming the alleged recruitment scam a “systemic fraud,” the court said the authorities were duty-bound to maintain the digitised records pertaining to the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff but it had nothing.

“The public job is so scarce…. Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes. This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?” the CJI asked the lawyers representing the state government.

The bench said the state government had nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities and asked about its availability. “Either you have the data or you do not have it…. You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control,” the bench told the state government’s lawyers.

At the outset, the Chief Justice asked the Bengal government why it created supernumerary posts and hired waitlisted candidates when the selection process itself had been challenged in court.

Taking the court through the high court order, the Bengal government’s counsel, Senior Advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul asked if such an order can be sustained. “It is not even CBI’s case that 25,000 appointments are all illegal. Everything, teacher-child ratio is gone for a toss,” he said.

Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta, appearing for the school service commission, argued that the high court bench did not have the jurisdiction to cancel the jobs and its orders were in conflict with Supreme Court judgments in the matter. When the Chief Justice asked if OMR sheets and scanned copies of answer sheets had been destroyed, he replied in the affirmative. The Chief Justice then asked why a tender was not issued for “such a sensitive matter.”

The Chief Justice then asked it was the commission’s duty to keep digital copies of these sheets. When Mr Gupta responded that it is with the agency that the work was outsourced to, the Chief Justice asked, “Where? CBI did not find it. It is outsourced, not with you. Can there be a greater breach of security protocols? They were only hired for scanning, but you let them have the entire data. You cannot say they took it away, you are responsible for maintaining people’s data.”

The Chief Justice then asked if the commission had wrongly told RTI applicants that it had the data. “There is no data (with you) at all.” Mr Gupta replied, “That may be.” When he asked if the high court’s directions were fair, the Chief Justice replied, “But this is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?”

Also appearing for the commission, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde said there is nothing in the high court judgment about irregularities on the part of the commission. “If we lose a whole chunk or generation in between, we will lose senior headmasters and examiners for the future. Lordships may bear in mind that many of them did not get any notice. When there is a headache, you do not cut off your entire head,” he said.

The counsels also pointed out some candidates are completely untainted and their OMR sheets are seen as correct. A segregation between tainted and untainted candidates, they contended, was placed before the high court. When the Chief Justice asked what was the basis on which a chart segregating tainted and untainted candidates was prepared, the Centre’s counsel, Senior Advocate Madhavi Divan, said the segregation was being created for the commission to save face.

Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, who has been representing aggrieved job aspirants said, “OMR sheets were filed without any markings, shown as securing more marks. Discrepancy between digital and SSC data. Huge manipulation.”

“The point we wanted to identify is that was the ground to hold the process so tainted as to cancel all appointments?” the Chief Justice asked.

The court listed the matter for July 16. It noted that based on the material, the tainted appointments can be segregated. “So it would be unwise to set aside the appointments in entirety. The court cannot be unmindful of the teachers appointed in large number and the consequence of upholding the impugned judgment. The modalities would then need to be developed for the same,” it said.

The Supreme Court had last week paused the high court order asking the CBI to investigate Bengal government officials in connection with the teacher recruitment scam. It had refused to stay the cancellation of the appointment of over 25,000 teaching and non-teaching staff.