Severe Jolt to Mamata Banerjee on Teacher Recruitment Scam

     Raipur, April 3, 2025: In a severe setback to Mamata Banerjee government, the apex court today upheld the Calcutta High Court order, cancelling the appointment of more than 24,000 teachers and non-teaching staff under the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC).

     A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justice PVSanjiv Kumar refused to interfere with the Calcutta High Court decision after noting that the appointments were vitiated by manipulation and fraud.

     For the 24,000 jobs over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations in 2016. It was alleged before the Calcutta High Court that the OMR sheets were wrongly evaluated to give appointment to those candidates, media reports said.

     In April 2024, the Calcutta High Court had cancelled the appointment of both teaching and non-teaching 24,000 employees of the State-aided schools.

    The judgment came amid Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee facing heat from both the BJP and the CMP on the issue as they had alleged large scale corruption in the recruitments to government staff.

     The court ruling definitely made Mamata politically uncomfortable although she had preferred to side with the 24,000 employees, who lost their government jobs.