Supreme Court quashes Calcutta HC’s order for CBI probe into creation of supernumerary teacher posts

Last year, the Calcutta High Court cancelled the recruitment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff by WBSSC after finding that OMR sheets were manipulated. The Bengal Government then moved the top court against the cancellation of the entire selection process, saying that the High Court could have left out the valid appointments.

On April 3, the apex court upheld the High Court order that invalided WBSSC’s 2016 appointment of more than 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff, calling the entire selection process “tainted beyond resolution”. The Supreme Court called for a fresh selection process to fill the vacancies.

The court then said it found no valid ground to interfere with the High Court’s direction that the services of tainted candidates must be cancelled and they should refund any salary or payment. “Candidates who are already employed need not be asked to refund or restitute any payments made to them. However, their services will be terminated. Furthermore, no candidate can be appointed once the entire examination process and results have been declared void.”

The court said that some of those who have been appointed, and don’t fall within the category of tainted candidates, may have previously worked in state government departments or autonomous bodies. “In such cases, although their appointments are cancelled, these candidates will have the right to apply to their previous departments or autonomous bodies to continue in service with those entities.”

The court pulled up WBSSC over its decision to destroy the OMR sheets without scanned mirror images being preserved in the server, saying it reflected “an attempt to cover up illegalities and lapses in the selection process of SSC”.

“It is clear that there is a discrepancy between the scanned OMR sheets recovered from the three hard disks in (Nysa employee) Pankaj Bansal’s possession and the marks recorded in WBSSC’s computer/records. This discrepancy has been acknowledged and accepted by WBSSC,” the court added.

“These issues, highlighted in both the impugned judgment and our findings, clearly point to large-scale manipulation and tampering with results, including rank-jumping, discrepancies in marks, the issuance of appointment letters to candidates not on the panel, and appointments made beyond the panel’s validity period. In spite of the factual background and the credible evidence indicating irregularities, WBSSC initially did try and cover up the lapses and illegalities.”

The court said: “The cover-up itself has made the verification and ascertainment more difficult or rather impossible given the scale of camouflage and dressing up done at each stage. We are convinced that the entire selection process was intentionally compromised due to the illegalities involved.”