Mamata Banerjee offers job hope for the ‘untainted’ after Supreme Court judgment
Telegraph | 9 April 2025
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday promised to protect the jobs of all those the Supreme Court had deemed “not specifically tainted” while scrapping their appointments because of a “vitiated” school recruitment process.
Addressing over 10,000 sacked and aggrieved teachers and other school staff at the Netaji Indoor Stadium, Mamata said: “So long as I am alive, I will not snatch the jobs of those deserving. This is my commitment.”
It was not immediately clear how she intended to carry out her promise.
Mamata spoke of a legal course and suggested she had other plans if that failed to yield results.
The state secondary education board filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on Monday, asking that those terminated but deemed not specifically tainted be allowed to continue till fresh recruitments were made.
On April 3, the Supreme Court cancelled the appointments of 25,773 teaching and non-teaching staff, upholding a Calcutta High Court judgment that said it was impossible to separate the tainted appointments from the rest.
Yet, the apex court did draw a distinction between the two groups, saying those whose appointments are deemed tainted should return the salaries they have drawn so far while the rest need not.
Sudipta Maity, standing beside her and holding a copy of an OMR, asked: “How could we be termed as tainted when the investigating agency could not prove anything against us?”
While the two were justifying their case outside Netaji Indoor stadium, a heated exchange started between the two and teachers who claimed they were among the untainted.
“It is because of tainted candidates like you that we are suffering,” some teachers, who said they were untainted, told Sucheta and Sudipta.
An official of the school department said a section of the teaching and non-teaching staff had first been terminated by then judge of Calcutta High Court Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
Gangopadhyay is now a BJP MP from Bengal.
“The candidates challenged the order before a division bench of the same court. The division bench in April last year terminated the entire panel of the school service commission, comprising the tainted and untainted, because it could not separate the deserving and the undeserving,” the official said.
The Supreme Court upheld Calcutta High Court’s order last Thursday.