A day after a Division Bench of Calcutta High Court quashed the entire panel of 2016 SSC tests throwing about 26,000 teaching and non-teaching school staff out of their respective jobs alleging corruption in appointment process, the Bengal Government on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court seeking reversal of the High Court order.
Alleging that the Court had cancelled the entire selection process without giving sufficient time to the government to deal with the issue State pleaded that the findings of the CBI — based on whose investigation the entire recruitment process was cancelled — did not indicate that the entire process was tainted and hence, all the appointments were irregular. "In fact, the High Court proceeds on the premise that further scrutiny of the selection might reveal more irregularities, which is purely based on conjecture and surmises and not supported by any cogent material on record," the State said in its plea even as the teachers who lost their jobs hit the streets with many of them threatening to commit mass suicides if they were not reinstated.
"Out of the 26,000 candidates many had got their jobs honestly … many of us had cleared other tests also earlier and had been working as teachers as sole bread-winners of our families with our parents children to take care of … if we lose job now after eight years then we will have to commit mass suicide an agitating candidate said. Meanwhile, lambasting the BJP and the CPI(M) for hatching the "entire gameplan to embarrass the State Government" Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that the way the BJP was dictating orders adding "I will not leave them and fight it out in the Supreme Court so that the jobs can be saved."
The BJP would not give jobs but would take them she said. "At a time when the job market is so sluggish, when the people cannot find jobs these people are serving their own narrow political interests by getting the courts to chuck people out," she said.
Five MLAs including two ministers and several top functionaries including Board chairpersons and sitting Vice-Chancellors were presently in jail on charges of recruitment scam.
