WBSSC admits about ‘doctored’ OMR sheets in Calcutta High Court

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay directed the commission to upload the OMR sheets of the candidates by March 9

TAPAS GHOSH AND SUBHANKAR CHOWDHURY | TT  |  04.03.23 : West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) filed an affidavit before Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court on Friday admitting that the OMR sheets of over 3,000 candidates who had written a test for Group C jobs in secondary schools had been tampered with.

While replying to a query by Justice Gangopadhyay, the WBSSC counsel admitted that the officials in charge of the commission in 2016 “might have tampered with the marks for appointing inefficient candidates in the vacant posts of Group C”.

Subires Bhattacharyya, a former chairman of the commission who was arrested last September in connection with the allegedly illegal appointment of teaching and non-teaching staff, helmed the panel when the selection test was held in 2016.

The judge directed the commission to upload the OMR sheets of the candidates by March 9.

When the case on recruitment of candidates in the Group C posts came up for hearing during the day, the WBSSC filed the affidavit stating that the marks of 3,178 candidates of 3,481 suspected cases were tampered with.

“Only in the case of 303 candidates, the marks mentioned in the OMR sheets were found to be tallying with the record kept in the commission’s server, “ the affidavit says.

The lawyer representing the commission said there was a mismatch of marks (marks in the selection test results stored on the commission’s server were not corresponding to the marks stored on the hard disc of the agency that was engaged to evaluate the OMR sheets).  

If a candidate has got 10 marks  in the test according to the data stored on the commission’s server, data stored on the hard disc of the agency that was engaged to evaluate the OMR sheets says he has 50 marks, said an official of the commission.

Hearing about such discrepancies, Justice Gangopadhyay said: “Only Subires Bhattacharyya can say how it was done. Investigators should interrogate him again.”

According to an order of Justice Gangopahdyay uploaded on the commission’s website on September 28, the CBI was able to collect three hard discs and the mother disk (original data) for marks in OMRs tabulated sheets, etc of all candidates of IX-X, XI-XII (school teachers), Groups C and D in respect of the recommendations by the SSC.

The CBI then compared the particulars contained in the mother disk and those in the server of the SSC. The status report by the CBI stated that the commission had recommended 2,037 Group C candidates for appointments. A mismatch of marks was found with respect to 3,481 candidates that included some of those appointed.

A commission official said Friday’s affidavit was in respect to that September 28, 2022, order of the court.