West Bengal School Jobs for Cash Scam: Supreme Court upholds HC cancellation of 24,000 school staff appointments

In a jolt to the West Bengal government, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Calcutta High Court order cancelling 24,000 appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in 2016 in connection with the school jobs for cash scam. .A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justice PV Sanjiv Kumar refused to interfere with the High Court decision after noting that the appointments were vitiated by manipulation and fraud."We have gone through the facts. Regarding findings of this case, entire selection process is vitiated by manipulation and fraud and credibility and legitimacy is denuded. No reason to interfere. Tainted candidates must be terminated and appointments were resultant of cheating and thus fraud," the Court said in its judgment.However, the Bench added that the candidates already appointed need not hand over the salary given so far. The Court further ordered that fresh selection process should be completed within 3 months. "The fresh selection process can also have relaxations for untainted candidates," the Court added while upholding the High Court order. .Entire selection process is vitiated by manipulation and fraud and credibility and legitimacy is denuded.Supreme Court.The infamous school jobs for cash scam pertains to various illegal recruitments allegedly made in the primary and secondary schools across the State during the recruitment process of 2016. Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It was alleged before the Calcutta High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR Sheets..In April 2024, the High Court cancelled the appointment of 24,000 employees (both teaching and non-teaching) to State-aided schools. The High Court noted that there was no clarity on which of the 23 lakh answer sheets were evaluated and therefore, ordered re-evaluation of all answer sheets.While holding the recruitment invalid, the High Court ordered the 24,000 candidates to return the salaries they received.The High Court also ordered the CBI to continue with the investigation into the recruitment scam.A total of 126 appeals were filed before the Supreme Court against the High Court's judgment, including one by the West Bengal government.The State's appeal before the Supreme Court alleged that the High Court on the basis of oral submissions and in absence of any affidavit on record arbitrarily cancelled the appointments. It was submitted that the decision of the High Court was in "utter disregard" of the fact that it will lead to a huge vacuum in the schools..Several persons including the former education minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress (TMC) party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the scam along with suspended TMC leaders like Santanu Kundu and Kuntal Ghosh.