WBSSC job case: Calcutta HC raises questions on new recruitment notification

A single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday, 1 July, made crucial observations questioning certain points in the recruitment notification issued by West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) to fill up the posts which fell vacant following the cancellation of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run schools by the Supreme Court.

While hearing a petition challenging the new recruitment notification, the single-judge bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya questioned why the commission introduced new “weightage criteria” in the new recruitment notification when the order from the apex court was clear that the rules for the new recruitment process should be same as were being followed in 2016, the entire panel of which was cancelled.

The second observation was why in the new notification, the candidates already been identified as “tainted” were not barred from participating in the new recruitment process despite the apex court giving a clear direction in the matter in its order in April this year.

According to justice Bhattacharyya, the notification should have mentioned that the identified “tainted” candidates will not be allowed to participate in the fresh recruitment process.

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Justice Bhattacharyya, on Tuesday, also sought explanations from the West Bengal government and the WBSSC on these two points.

As per the new notification issued in May, the written examination in the fresh recruitment process will carry 60 marks, as against 55 for the 2016 panel.

Secondly, the weightage criterion for educational qualification in the fresh recruitment process is just 10 as against 35 for the 2016 panel.

Most importantly, two new weightage criteria, each carrying 10 marks, 'past teaching experience' and 'lecture demonstration', have been introduced in the new recruitment process.

Soon after the notification was issued, several legal minds apprehended that the notification faced legal hurdles because of the changes in weightage criteria in total marks distribution.

Last month, the petition was filed at the Calcutta High Court challenging the notification mainly on these two grounds on which Justice Bhattacharya raised questions on Tuesday.

On April 3, the Supreme Court’s division bench of erstwhile Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld a previous order by the Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi cancelling 25,753 school jobs in West Bengal.

The apex court also accepted the observation of the Calcutta High Court that the entire panel of 25,753 candidates had to be cancelled because of the failure of the state government and the commission to segregate the “untainted" candidates from the "tainted" ones.

The state government and WBSSC had already filed review petitions at the apex court on this issue.