A petition has been filed at the Calcutta High Court challenging the West Bengal School Service Commission’s (WBSSC) written exam results for recruiting higher secondary teachers. The petitioner alleges that “tainted” candidates, barred by the Supreme Court from the fresh recruitment process, are included in the interview list. The court has admitted the petition and will hear it soon.

Kolkata: A petition was filed at the Calcutta High Court on Monday, challenging the results of the written examination for fresh recruitment of higher secondary teachers in state-run schools of West Bengal.

The results were published by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Saturday night.

The fresh recruitment is taking place to fill vacancies arising from the cancellation of around 26,000 school jobs by a division bench of the Supreme Court earlier this year. While pronouncing that judgement in April this year, the apex court barred the “tainted” teachers, who had obtained the jobs after paying money, from participating in the fresh recruitment process.

In a petition filed at Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha, the petitioner had claimed that in the list of candidates qualifying for interview published by WBSSC on Saturday, there are names of several “tainted” candidates.

The petitioner had questioned how the names of these “tainted” candidates could figure in the merit list of candidates qualifying for the interview, when they were barred by the apex court from participating in the fresh recruitment process, the first step of which was the written examination, which was conducted in September this year.

The petition has been admitted by Justice Sinha’s bench, and the matter is expected to come up for hearing this week only.

Around 20,000 candidates who appeared for the written test for the fresh recruitment process have qualified for the interview. The process of verifying their documents will begin on November 18.

The Supreme Court, on April 3 this year, upheld an earlier order by a division bench of the Calcutta High Court cancelling the entire panel of WBSSC for 2016. The Supreme Court also accepted the Calcutta High Court’s argument that the entire panel had to be cancelled since, despite repeated insistence both by the high court as well as the apex court, neither the state education department nor the commission furnished two separate lists segregating the “untainted” candidates from the “tainted” ones.

The apex court directed that the entire fresh recruitment process will have to be completed by December 31 this year. Although the Supreme Court barred the “tainted” teachers from participating in the fresh recruitment process, it allowed “untainted” teachers to participate.

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