A petition was filed Tuesday before the Calcutta High Court’s vacation bench of Justice Partha Sarathi Chatterjee to challenge the latest notification issued by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) for the recruitment of 35,726 teachers.
The petitioner Lubana Parveen, who was one of the almost 26,000 teachers appointed in 2016 by the SSC who lost their jobs this year after a Supreme Court judgment, alleges that the notification violates directives previously issued by the apex court. The matter is expected to be heard on June 5.
According to advocate Firdous Shamim, the Supreme Court did not authorise the “creation” of a new recruitment rule that allocates 10 marks for teaching experience. Effectively, he claims, the rule means that the sacked teachers would sit for an exam of 90 marks while other applicants would appear for an exam of 100 marks.
He said that the 2025 recruitment process “should adhere to the rules from 2016”.
Under the 2016 rules, academic qualifications carried 35 marks, the written test was worth 55 marks, and interviews were allotted 10 marks. However, under the new rules of 2025, academic qualifications have been reduced to 10 marks, written test marks increased to 60, and 10 marks each are allocated for interviews and lecture demonstrations.
Shamim claims that the new rule introduces 10 marks for “teaching experience” which “disadvantages candidates without prior experience”. He alleged that the interview shortlist was previously prepared based on a total of 90 marks; now, it is based on 70 marks. Additionally, he claims that the candidate-to-post interview ratio has been changed from 1:1.4 (140 candidates for 100 posts) to 1:1.6 (160 candidates for 100 posts), further deviating from the original recruitment procedure.
On May 30, the WBSSC issued a notification for recruiting 35,726 teachers for state-aided schools, following a Supreme Court directive to do so by May 31. According to the notification published on the WBSSC website, 23,312 teachers are to be recruited for classes 9-10 and 12,514 for classes 11-12 in secondary and higher secondary schools, respectively.
This follows the Supreme Court’s April order terminating the employment of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff in government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools, as it found the 2016 recruitment panel “tainted”.
The court later clarified that “untainted” individuals among the dismissed employees would continue to receive salaries until December, while 1,804 individuals were permanently barred from returning to service.
On April 17, the Supreme Court directed the state government and the WBSSC to file affidavits by May 31 which would detail the fresh process to fill the resulting vacancies.