All appointments based on 2014 TET on the line, if CBI fails to retrieve data from OMR sheets High court glare on school hiring scam

TAPAS GHOSH, SUBHANKAR CHOWDHURY | TT  |  10.04.24 : Justice Rajaseskhar Mantha of the high court on Tuesday said he would be forced to cancel all the appointments based on the 2014 TET (teachers’ eligibility test) if the CBI fails to retrieve data from the OMR sheets.

The judge said this while hearing a case about alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teachers at government-aided primary schools (Classes I to V).

A little over 59,000 teachers were recruited in schools based on the 2014 TET.

If the judge passes such an order, the appointment of all the teachers will stand cancelled.

“The digital records (of the OMR sheets) cannot be erased easily. Even if the records get erased, there are ways to retrieve the data. If the data cannot be retrieved by the CBI, the court would be forced to cancel the entire appointment process...,” the judge said.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the counsel representing the primary board said that since the CBI took custody of the digital OMR sheets, it would not be possible to present them in the court, as directed by the court earlier.

The CBI counsel, however, said the records were with the board.

At this, the judge expressed dissatisfaction and asked the CBI to trace the original records.

“The CBI will have to find out. It also can go to the board’s office. There must be some digital footprint,” said Justice Mantha.

A lawyer representing the candidates who have alleged irregularities in the recruitment process said they wanted the OMR sheets of all candidates to be produced in the court.

“The state primary education board said our clients could not be recruited because they failed in the written exam of 150 marks. We are of the view that the recruitments were manipulated. So we wanted the scanned images of the OMR sheets of all examinees to be produced,” said Sudipta Dasgupta, the lawyer.

Gautam Paul, president of the ad-hoc committee that runs the primary board, said: “We have not tampered with the digitised data.”

It was during the tenure of Paul’s predecessor Manik Bhattacharya that the board had decided to destroy the hard copies of the OMR sheets because preservation beyond a period would lead to a space crunch, said a board official.