In a major setback to the West Bengal government, the Calcutta High Court Thursday cancelled 1,600 supernumerary upper primary teaching posts for vocational and physical education.
The order was passed by a single bench of Justice Biswajit Basu, who observed, “Constitutional morality never becomes worthless in the face of political morality.”
The Bengal government had created these additional vacancies in 2022, three years after the relevant recruitment panel expired in 2019. The court held that new vacancies cannot be generated on the basis of an expired panel, terming the 1,600 posts “illegal”.
The government maintained that the posts were needed to address shortages of subject-specific teachers, but the court made it clear that appointments cannot be granted by bypassing the legal framework. During the hearing, Justice Basu said, “An attempt has been made to revive a dead panel by injecting life into it.”
The bench also directed that no recruitment shall be carried out against these posts, saying if fresh vacancies are to be filled, the state must issue a new vacancy notification and conduct a new recruitment process. While the state may exercise special executive powers, the court noted, such powers cannot be used arbitrarily or in a manner that infringes upon individual rights.
Of the cancelled posts, 750 were created for Work Education and 850 for Physical Education. Allegations of corruption in these appointments eventually led to petitions before the HC. The two 2022 notifications that enabled creation of these posts have now been struck down, effectively cancelling the recruitment process for all 750 Work Education and 850 Physical Education vacancies. These supernumerary posts had been created to accommodate candidates on the waiting list, with the WBSSC planning to use them for Upper Primary appointments.
Speaking to the media, petitioner counsel Firdous Shamim said, “The cabinet took an illegal decision, just to give their favourite persons a job. We challenged the notification, and the court set aside the order.”
The dispute dates back to 2016, when the West Bengal School Service Commission began the recruitment process for teaching and non-teaching staff.
In May 2022, amid litigation over alleged irregularities, the state’s school education department issued an order creating 6,861 supernumerary posts to absorb waitlisted candidates. The creation of posts in Work Education and Physical Education was soon challenged in the Calcutta High Court.
In November 2022, Justice Biswajit Basu imposed an interim stay on their creation and recruitment, and later that month, a division bench directed the CBI to investigate the decision, calling it a potential attempt to regularise illegal appointments.
In April 2025, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s direction for a CBI probe into the cabinet decision itself, noting that cabinet decisions are generally beyond judicial review. It clarified, however, that the investigation into irregular appointments would continue.
In May 2025, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court refused to lift the stay on appointments to these posts, maintaining the status quo. Finally, in December 2025, the High Court’s single bench cancelled the supernumerary posts in Upper Primary vocational and physical education.