The Calcutta High Court Cancelled 2016 SSC Panel & Almost 26000 People Would Lose Their Jobs
The honourable Calcutta High Court cancelled the appointment of 25753 individuals, including teaching and non-teaching staff of secondary, higher secondary, Group-C and Group D employment in West Bengal, declaring the panel illegal and unconstitutional.
A division bench of the Calcutta High Court comprising Justice Debangsu Basak and Md. Shabbar Rashidi declared the panel “null & void”, based on the violations of 17 conditions, including OMR sheet manipulation, tender fraudulence, employment of more people than the declared vacancies, non-empanelled individuals, blank answer sheet submission, recruitment of low-scoring candidates, appointment after panel expiry, creation of super numeric posts, counselling after the expiry date, etc.
The order sheets/verdict of the division bench directed the appointed individuals to return their total withdrawn salaries with interest within four weeks on the grounds of being a part of the crime and involved in the fraudulent nature of the appointment.
The honourable Calcutta High Court ordered the West Bengal State Government to conduct a new recruitment process for all vacancies, while CBI will continue its investigation process in this case on all types of scams, irregularities, and regulation violations (17 types).
The court ordered the administration and concerned authorities to take immediate action on the matter of fresh appointments in the next 15 days. It opens a new horizon on West Bengal state-sponsored corruption explicitly with the super numeric post creation by the state cabinet ministers of West Bengal. It proves that the state cabinet intentionally protected fraudulent appointments and endorsed illegal appointments that could open a new chance for the CBI officers and investigators to put the state cabinet in jail. The verdict directed CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) to look into the matter critically and submit its report to the Calcutta High Court.
The verdict came after the bench had ordered the SSC (school service commission) to re-evaluate the OMR sheets from the 2016 recruitment exam in the ongoing legal proceedings in the cash-for-jobs multi-level SSC recruitment scam.
West Bengal SSC failed to submit their reports and affidavits to prove the recruitment was transparent. The observations of the Hon’ble Justice- Debangsu Basak and Md. Shabbar Rashidi concluded the recruitment was illegal. Therefore, the appointees must surrender their withdrawn salaries with interests immediately (within four weeks) before the jurisdictional magistrates.
