SSC uploads scanned images of 2016 OMR sheets following Supreme Court order
Telegraph | 11 May 2026
The school service commission (SSC) has uploaded scanned images of the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheets on which teaching job aspirants had marked their answers while appearing for the 2016 selection tests, following an order of the Supreme Court of India.
A recruitment panel that was drawn based on the 2016 selection tests was scrapped by the Supreme Court on April 3, last year.
In March this year, the Supreme Court served contempt notices to the school education department and the SSC, saying that it had accepted a contempt petition which sought that the scanned images of the OMRs be uploaded.
The apex court said it would hear the petition on May 11, said lawyer Sudipto Dasgupta, who filed the contempt petition.
The scanned images of those who wrote the selection tests held to shortlist candidates for the appointment of teachers at the secondary and higher secondary levels were uploaded late on Saturday, two days before the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the petition.
A notice signed by SSC chairperson Siddhartha Majumdar says: “The images of the OMRs of the candidates of Class levels of IX-X and XI-XII of 1st SLST (AT-assistant teachers), 2016 as available in hard disc drives received from the CBI, are hereby uploaded towards compliance of the solemn judgement.....following the spirit of the solemn judgement and order of the Supreme Court dated 03.04.2025”.
SLST means the State Level Selection Test.
The commission uploaded the scanned images of the OMR just days after the BJP stormed to power in Bengal.
The notice says that the scanned images of the OMRs of those who had written the selection tests held to shortlist candidates for the appointment of the non-teaching staff at the same levels of the government-aided schools, will be uploaded “shortly”.
A division bench of Calcutta High Court led by Justice Debangsu Basak, on April 22, 2024, had ordered the uploading of the OMR while terminating the jobs of the 25,752 teaching and non-teaching staff at the secondary and higher secondary levels following illegalities in the recruitment process held in 2016.
As many as 17,209 teachers had been terminated. The rest were Group C and D staff.
On April 3, 2025, the Supreme Court upheld the termination.
Since the commission did not upload the scanned images of the OMR, a contempt petition was moved before the apex court in July last year, said lawyer Sudipto Dasgupta.
“The scanned images have been uploaded following the spirit of the Supreme Court order. The Supreme Court is likely to hear the case on May 11,” SSC chairperson Majumdar said on Sunday.
An SSC official said they did not upload the scanned images until Saturday because a division bench of then Chief Justice at the Supreme Court, Sanjiv Khanna, while upholding the Calcutta High Court’s order on termination of jobs in April last year, did not say anything specifically on uploading the OMRs.
But a contempt petition was filed in the court of the Supreme Court Justice Sanjay Kumar in July last year, urging that scanned images of the OMRs of the teaching job aspirants be uploaded, honouring what the Calcutta High Court division bench ordered.
The apex court accepted the petition in March, and the SSC was forced to act, said an education department official.
The official said the scanned images have been uploaded at a time when the SSC is in the process of appointing school teachers afresh through a selection process.
The commission, which held selection tests in September last year, has begun counselling candidates to appoint them as assistant teachers at the higher secondary level for the 12,514 vacant posts.
The SSC has yet to start the interview process for the appointment of teachers at the secondary level for the 23,314 vacant posts.