LUBANA PARVIN WAS sweating profusely on the premises of the Calcutta High Court on April 21. And it was not just the heat wave in Kolkata that troubled her, the 36-year-old said. She was also intensely anxious.
The court was about to announce its verdict in the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam. Parvin was among the candidates who, despite being on the merit list, had failed to get a teaching job. She had also joined cause with one of the multiple petitions that the court had clubbed together and was about to declare its judgment on.
When the verdict came, at around 11am, anxious sweat turned into tears of joy. “We finally have justice,” said Parvin, a resident of Khidirpur in south Kolkata. The court had nullified the entire panel of teaching and non-teaching staff appointed through the State Level Selection Test in 2016. Parvin said: “We saw candidates who were behind us in the merit list getting jobs. We are hoping that we will soon get those jobs.”
The 282-page judgment rendered 25,753 teaching (assistant teacher for class 9-10 and class 11-12) and non-teaching staff (Group C and D clerks) unemployed. This left everyone from lawyers to street vendors wondering if Indian judiciary had ever seen a verdict that impacted so many jobs at once.
The court ordered that a new recruitment process must begin within 15 days of the end of the Lok Sabha elections. It also mandated that those recruited unlawfully must return the full salary they earned with 12 per cent annual interest.
The court underscored irregularities in the recruitment process―the use of private entities to assess OMR sheets, violating constitutional Articles 14 (equality before law) and 16 (prohibition of discrimination). The court found that the OMR sheets were destroyed without preserving scanned copies on the SSC server. Appointments were given to individuals not on the panel and those who submitted blank OMR sheets. Appointments were also made after the panel’s expiry. Furthermore, lower-ranked applicants were preferred over higher-ranked ones.
In its judgment, the division bench said that the CBI investigation into the case would continue and directed the central agency to submit its report in three months.
While many, like Parvin, rejoiced, a dejected Debabrata Mandal asked why the court had taken his job. “I did not pay any bribe and got my job genuinely after clearing all exams properly,” he said. The 32-year-old teacher from West Midnapore district said the court order did not do justice. “I used to think that the judiciary’s duty is to ensure that no innocent gets punished,” he said. “My belief stands changed from today.” He had been in the job for more than six years. Interestingly, he is also an election agent in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.
Rashmoni Patra, 32, who has been a part of a sit-in protest for more than 1,100 days under the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the Esplanade area, also said she was dissatisfied with the ruling. “We urged the court to only dismiss those who were unlawfully hired and fill the vacancies with deserving candidates like us,” said Patra, who had shaved her head bald to mark the 1,000th day of their protest.
Fellow protester Abhishek Sen wondered why the court asked deserving candidates to reestablish their qualifications through a new recruitment process. “I proved myself once and I have gone through mental trauma for the last six years,” said Sen, 37, who had applied to be a history teacher for classes 11 and 12. “Why should I prove myself [again] for their crime?” The protest is continuing even after the verdict because protesters are unhappy with the ruling.
SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumder said the commission would move Supreme Court against the verdict. “After years of investigations, irregularities were found in appointments of about five thousand candidates,” he said. “We are unsure why the entire panel was cancelled.”
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, a senior lawyer who appeared for the petitioners, said the court was unable to distinguish between deserving and undeserving candidates because “the entire recruitment process was tainted”. “We pointed out and the court noted several irregularities,” said Bhattacharya, who is a CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member. “It was difficult to segregate, that is why the entire panel was rejected.”
Firdous Samim, another senior lawyer representing the petitioners, said the protesting candidates and those who got their jobs lawfully need not fear as the commission will now start recruitment afresh. “Deserving candidates will get their chance,” he said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the verdict illegal and declared that the state government would challenge it in the apex court. Lawyer and Trinamool MP Kalyan Banerjee, who had appeared for candidates who had secured jobs, said: “The court did not consider our arguments. We did not want the deserving candidates to suffer. We will appeal to the Supreme Court.”
Meanwhile, opposition parties came down heavily on the government. Given that the Lok Sabha election is under way and West Bengal still has six phases left, they believe this will hit the ruling party hard. “The corruption was so deep at every level that the court did not have any option but to reject the entire panel,” said Bhattacharya. “As a result of people who bribed and got jobs, even deserving candidates now suffer. They will give a fitting reply [to the TMC].”
Senior BJP leader and MP Dilip Ghosh said the state government could not escape blame. “Because of the system of multi-level systematic corruption that Mamata Banerjee’s government has created, even innocents have to suffer now,” he said. “We are anyway at advantage. Our claims of the TMC’s corruption have been legitimised now.”
Political analyst Subhamoy Maitra though thinks that the opposition might also get hurt. “The tide of recruitment scam against the TMC is not new,” he said. “In this regard, the TMC is already cornered. So, there is nothing new. But what is new is that so many deserving candidates have lost their jobs.” Maitra, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, said these people, and their friends and families, may now rally against the opposition.