School jobs for cash case: Calcutta High Court stays State stipend to tainted non-teaching staff

The Calcutta High Court on Friday stayed the State government’s scheme offering a stipend to the 2016 batch non-teaching staff who had lost their jobs after the Supreme Court held their selections to be tainted [Prokash Mandal & Anr v The State of West Bengal & Ors]..The State government was paying a stipend to thousands of Group C and Group D officials who were terminated by the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court. Justice Amrita Sinha stayed the same and stated that the stay will remain in force till September 26 or until further orders, whichever is earlier. “As an interim measure, the State is restrained from giving any effect and/or further effect to the impugned Scheme till 26th September, 2025 or until further order, whichever is earlier,” the Court ordered. .It observed that once the Supreme Court has decided that the appointment was a result of fraud, beneficiaries of such fraud cannot be provided any support from the public exchequer. “By virtue of the Scheme certain persons who have been found to be involved in fraudulent activity by the Hon’ble Court will be provided rupees twenty-five thousand or twenty thousand per month from the public exchequer without performing any job, duty or work,” the Court noted. .Three separate petitions were filed in the High Court challenging the West Bengal Livelihood Social Security Interim Scheme, 2025. The petitioners included both the terminated employees who had been left out of the scheme and the ones who had participated in the recruitment process but did not get the job. It was argued by the government that the scheme was meant to provide a limited livelihood on humanitarian grounds to several thousand people who lost their jobs after court orders. .Notably, in April 2024, the Calcutta High Court had terminated the appointment of nearly 24,000 teaching and non-teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in 2016. Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It was alleged that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR Sheets.The Supreme Court upheld the decision on April 3, 2025. The West Bengal government has filed a review petition against this order, and it is pending before the apex court. .Senior Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya along with advocates Sudipta Dasgupta, Bikram Banerjee, Baibhav Roy, Arindam Sit, Firdous Samim, Gopa Biswas, Payel Shome, Swati Dey and Saikat Mallick appeared for the petitioners. The State of West Bengal was represented through Advocate General Kishore Datta as well as advocate Somnath Ganguly, Swapan Banerjee, Pratiti Das, Debanjan Mondal, Sandip Dasgupta, Mahima Cholera, Deepan Sarkar, Deepti Priya, Sumita Shaw, Diptendu Narayan Banerjee and Soumen Chatterjee. .[Read Order]