WBSSC scam: Terminated teachers, non-teaching staff approach Calcutta HC

The secondary teachers and non-teaching staff in Group-D category in different state-run schools in Kolkata, whose services were terminated following order from two separate single-judge benches of the Calcutta High Court recently, on Monday approached a division bench of the same court challenging the termination orders.

Both the groups of the secondary teachers and non- teaching staff have approached the Calcutta High Court's division bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Supratim Bhattacharya. Senior counsel of the Calcutta High Court, president of the Calcutta High Court Bar Association and senior Congress leader Arunava Ghosh is holding the brief on behalf of the terminated candidates.

On February 9, Calcutta High Court's single-judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay directed the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) to upload the list of these 2,819 non-teaching staff on the commission's website within 24 hours and accordingly start the process of terminating their services.

On February 10, the commission started the process by uploading the list of 2,819 non-teaching staff, out of which 1,911 individuals had received appointment letters or were employed in different state-run schools in the state.

WBSSC after that started the process of terminating the services of those 1,911 and stopped the process of issuing appointment letters to the remaining 908 candidates.

Earlier, Justice Biswajit Basu of the Calcutta High Court ordered the termination of services for 805 secondary teachers in different state-run schools, after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) gave a report to the court that these teachers received jobs through manipulation in their optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets. WBSSC too had already started the process of termination of services of these secondary teachers.

However, the entire process gets stuck now since both the teachers and non- teaching staff have now approached the division bench challenging their respective termination orders.