In a huge relief to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee amid the Lok Sabha polls, the Supreme Court today stayed a Calcutta High Court order scrapping 26,000 jobs due to the widespread irregularities in the recruitment process. Many Trinamool Congress leaders, including Ministers and MLAs, are in CBI and ED custody for selling jobs of teaching and non-teaching staff to undeserving candidates.
The Calcutta High Court had ordered the scrapping of the entire recruitment panel of approximately 26,000 names since the court said “neither the West Bengal Government nor the CBI had been able to segregate the deserving candidates from the non-deserving”.
Though the Supreme Court only ordered an interim stay till the next date of hearing on July 16, Mamata Banerjee tweeted: “I am really very happy and mentally relaxed on receipt of justice at the highest Court of the land. Congratulations to the entire teaching fraternity and my humble regards to the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”
The CPIM’s Rajya Sabha MP and senior lawyer Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who had been representing candidates whose claims were overlooked, told The Daily Guardian: “There is no reason why Mamata Banerjee should be so elated. The Supreme Court clearly said that there was systematic fraud in the entire recruitment process. It made scathing observations about the way the Government and its agencies had gone about recruiting people.”
“The only relief for Mamata is that the CBI will not be able to arrest Mamata and her entire Cabinet till July 16, which they were fearing. However, the CBI will still be able to continue its investigations,” he said, adding: “The Supreme Court has only given a procedural stay since there are so many parties and each one has to be given a fair hearing. That was not possible in today’s hearing, even though it carried on almost for the full day.”
The Supreme Court Division Bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Calcutta High Court’s April 22 decision that invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in State-run and State-aided schools of West Bengal.
“This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?” the CJI asked the lawyers representing the State Government.
The Bench said the State Government has nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities and asked about its availability.
“Either you have the data or you do not have it…. You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control,” the Bench told the State Government’s lawyers.
The State Government had challenged the Calcutta High Court order, saying it cancelled the appointments “arbitrarily”.
The day began on a bad note for the State Government’s lawyers as the Chief Justice asked pointed questions.
At the outset, the Chief Justice asked the Bengal Government why it created supernumerary posts and hired waitlisted candidates when the selection process itself had been challenged in court.
Taking the Supreme Court through the High Court order, the Bengal Government’s counsel, Senior Advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul asked if such an order can be sustained. “It is not even the CBI’s case that 25,000 appointments are all illegal. Everything, teacher-child ratio is gone for a toss,” he said.
Senior Advocate Jaideep Gupta, appearing for the West Bengal School Service Commission, argued that the High Court bench did not have the jurisdiction to cancel the jobs and its orders were in conflict with Supreme Court judgments in the matter.
When the CJI if OMR sheets and scanned copies of answer sheets had been destroyed, he replied in the affirmative. The Chief Justice then asked why a tender was not issued for “such a sensitive matter”.