HC clears the decks to start appt process of over 14K asst teachers

MP, 29 Aug 2024, Kolkata: After roughly 10 years, the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) is set to appoint over 14,000 candidates as assistant teachers in state government-sponsored and aided upper primary schools. 

The Calcutta High Court, on Wednesday, directed WBSSC to complete the appointment process for 14,052 candidates as assistant teachers in state government-sponsored and aided upper primary schools within 12 weeks. Assuring transparency in the process, state Education minister Bratya Basu said: “The complications over 14,000 vacancies in upper primary schools are solved. 

The Commission is going to complete this recruitment process very fast with full transparency. Hopefully, before Durga Puja, smiles will appear on the faces of job aspirants.” 

Siddhartha Majumder, chairman of WBSSC also expressed optimism following the HC judgement.
The Division Bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Partha Sarathi Chatterjee directed the commission to hold fresh counselling for a total of 14052 candidates who appeared in the personality test (PT) and recommend them within four weeks after the publication of the final merit list. 

Based on the recommendations, the court directed the competent authority to issue appointment letters within four weeks thereafter. 

The Commission was directed to prepare and publish the final merit list and the panel including those candidates excluded from the merit list due to the irregularities detected in their credentials, within four weeks. 

The earlier counselling process by the Commission was set aside in a bid to include the excluded candidates in the recruitment process. The exclusion was due to rechecking of the documents of these 14052 candidates who appeared in the personality test. 

After a complete re-evaluation and scrutiny of documents, including the scanned copies of the original OMRs, 1463 candidates were initially excluded due to irregularities detected in their credentials. 

Later, the number of ultimately excluded candidates stood at 713. The court, in its judgement, set aside the commission’s re-evaluation, citing legal grounds. 

The court said: “In our opinion, the Commission had no jurisdiction to re-evaluate or recheck or scrutinize various aspects of each of the aforesaid 14052 candidates by an independent agency after completion of the PT. Such an act is thus not sustainable in law and is set aside.” 

 The order to hold counselling raised some confusion among all the stakeholders because as per an earlier directive of the court, the first phase of counselling was already conducted by the Commission. The court made it clear that fresh counselling needs to be held for all the candidates in the final panel. 

There are 14,339 vacancies, excluding 10 per cent vacancies reserved for para teachers in Upper Primary Level. 

The first notification for the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) for the upper primary level was issued in 2014 and a written test was held in 2015. In 2016, a recruitment notification was published. 

Following this, a panel was prepared. But in 2020, HC cancelled the entire selection process and the Commission was directed to hold a fresh selection process. Subsequently, under HC’s observation, a fresh selection process was started and personality tests (PT) were conducted in 2021 and 2022, and 14052 candidates appeared in the PT. 

The court’s decision brings relief to thousands of candidates. Sushanta Ghosh, a representative of ‘Paschim Banga Upper Primary Chakriparthi Mancha’ said: “We have been waiting for a long time. We hope that the state government will make arrangements to send us to schools before puja, as there are no legal restrictions.” 

According to sources, the final count for the candidates can vary from 14052 since the actual number of excluded candidates stands at 633, not 713. The last panel consisted of 13,339. 

https://www.millenniumpost.in/bengal/rg-kar-case-16-days-gone-where-is-justice-mamata-asks-cbi-577511?infinitescroll=1