HC upholds single bench order rejecting invalidated ‘tainted’ teachers’ appeal
The Statesman | 5 September 2025The division Bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty today made it clear that candidates, whose names have already been mentioned in the official list of 1806 ‘tainted’ teachers released by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), would be allowed in the fresh recruitment test examination.
SSC is responsible for recruitment tests of teachers, group C and D employees in state government secondary and higher secondary schools across the state.
Challenging the WBSSC’s list of ‘tainted’ teachers, around 350 candidates had moved the HC seeking to appear at the fresh examination for assistant teachers.
The single Bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya rejected their appeal on Tuesday because they are ‘tainted’ as per the official list of the WBSSC. Justice Bhattacharya also said that the case was under the Supreme Court. The petitioners then moved the division Bench of Justice Chakraborty, who upheld the verdict of the single Bench of Justice Bhattacharya today.
During the hearing of the case, the WBSSC claimed that some candidates might have been issued admit cards for the fresh recruitment examination owing to mistakes.
The division Bench pulled up the commission while reacting to the latter’s claim of ‘mistakes’.
Justice Chakraborty raised questions saying: “Why won’t the officials of the commission be found guilty for the mistakes?”
The WBSSC on Saturday finally made the list of 1,806 ‘tainted’ teachers from the panel of SLST, held by it in 2016, public by releasing their names on its official website.
The WBSSC lawyer had assured the apex court to publish a list of 1,900 ‘tainted’ candidates on Friday.
The WBSSC released the list four days ahead of the deadline set by the apex court, on 3 September. It had uploaded the list with alphabetical order on its official website at 8 p.m. last Saturday giving their names, serial number and roll number.
The commission was prompted to produce the list after the apex court on 28 August directed the former to publish it on their official website in the next seven days.
A Bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma had said that they are monitoring the fresh recruitment process.
Sources in the WBSSC said that the list was made public after thorough scrutiny of the ‘tainted’ candidates.
As per the apex court directive, no ‘tainted’ candidates are allowed to appear at the fresh recruitment tests.
The new recruitment process is open for all, and the 2016 panel teachers who lost their jobs fear that they will be forced to compete with young candidates who have had much longer to prepare, leaving them at a disadvantage.
On 3 April, the apex court had upheld the HC order that cancelled the appointment of all candidates in the 2016 panel. They also asked the WBSSC to conduct a fresh recruitment process and scrap all the people hired in the 2016 panel.
“The exams are on course and we are ensuring full transparency,” an official of the WBSSC said.
According to the commission, out of the 25,753 appointments invalidated by the Supreme Court’s 3 April verdict, 5,303 teaching and non-teaching staff were found to be tainted.
Of these, 1,804 are teachers. The number of untainted teachers stands at 15,803, the official added.
