Calcutta High Court starts shifting twin cases

Papers taken out of Justice Gangopadhyay's court

Tapas Ghosh   |   TT  |   Calcutta   |  02.05.23  : The Calcutta High Court administration started the process of withdrawing two major primary school recruitment scam cases from Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay’s court on Monday.

On Friday, the Supreme Court division bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud ordered the withdrawal of two main cases relating to the alleged scam in recruiting teachers in primary schools based on the 2014 Teacher Eligibility Test (TET).

As far as the other primary teacher recruitment cases are concerned, the Supreme Court had said the acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court would take a decision on whether those would also be transferred from Justice Gangopadhyay’s court to another.

Calcutta High Court acting Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Monday took steps to withdraw papers related to the two cases concerned, but is yet to decide who would be the next judge for their hearing.

On the other related cases, acting Chief Justice Sivagnanam is yet to take a decision.

Sources in the high court said that the acting Chief Justice asked officials to collect all papers related to those two cases from the court of Justice Gangopadhyay and send them to his office.

It was done.

“The acting Chief Justice will send the cases to any other judge of the court for disposal within a couple of days,” a senior high court official said.

The cases that were shifted from Justice Gangopadhyay’s court were “Soumen Nandi vs the State of West Bengal” and “Ramesh Mallik vs the State of West Bengal”.

These two cases were related to the alleged scam during the recruitment of teachers in primary schools in 2014, in which Justice Gangopadhyay had issued CBI probe orders.

Three big sacks containing the documents were withdrawn from the courtroom of Justice Gangopadhyay.

Other education-related matters regarding the upper primary and secondary teacher and staff recruitment scam cases had been shifted to the court of Justice Biswajit Basu last year itself.

For the cases related to the scam during the recruitment of teachers, group C, and group D staff and teachers in upper primary, Justice Gangopadhyay had initially issued CBI probe orders. But later, the jurisdiction of the judge for hearing the case changed.

Some other fresh petitions related to primary teacher recruitment are pending before Justice Gangopadhyay. The apex court had given the acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court the liberty to shift them from Justice Gangopadhyay’s Court. However, the acting Chief Justice has not taken any decision in this regard.

On Monday, Justice Gangopadhyay attended his courtroom No. 17 from around 12.20 pm and took up some cases regarding primary education.

A lawyer in the courtroom told the judge that his son, a student of Visva-Bharati, had written an open letter to the judge. The judge read it.

During the day, the judge heard a couple of matters, but passed a single order in a case, where candidates with BEd degrees demanded an order allowing them to appear in the primary TET of 2022.

The judge ordered the primary education board to open a fresh portal informing the candidates who had obtained their BEd degrees would be allowed to appear in the primary TET.