Calcutta High Court sets aside single bench order terminating services of 32,000 teachers; Mamata Banerjee hails verdict

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee (file image)

In a relief to 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday set aside a single bench order that annulled their appointments, and observed that "a group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to damage the entire system".

The bench, comprising justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetabrata Kumar Mitra, also said it is not inclined to uphold the single bench order as irregularities have not been proven in all the recruitments, and that termination of services cannot be based only on an ongoing criminal proceeding.

The appointment of the teachers, who were recruited in 2016 through the Teachers' Eligibility Test (TET) panel of 2014 by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, was challenged by a group of unsuccessful candidates who alleged recruitment fraud.

The termination of employment after nine years would have a huge impact on the primary teachers and their families, and innocent teachers would also "suffer great ignominy and stigma", the court said.

The division bench said that the single bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay in the judgment of May 12, 2023, had gone beyond the pleadings and cancelled the appointments made upon a purported finding that no aptitude test was held.

"In the dispensation of justice, courts are prevented from innovating at pleasure...neither can they don the helmet of a knight errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness," the bench observed.

The division bench said it is true that courts should emphasise fairness, transparency, and accountability in public service and will support wholesale cancellation of examinations if systemic irregularities undermine the process.

"However, the court is not expected to indulge in roving enquiry to rule out all possible explanations and alternative scenarios justifying such irregularities," the bench added.

"There is a difference between a proven case of mass cheating in a board examination and an unproven imputed charge of corruption...When services are terminated on the ground that the incumbent aided and abetted corruption, the court must satisfy itself that the condition for this exists," the court observed.

It further said that for cancellation of the entire examination, there must be, as a rule, "possibility of systemic malaise as borne out by materials on record".

The verdict brought joy and relief to the in-service teachers, who, after the Supreme Court judgment that terminated appointments of nearly 26,000 teachers and non-teaching staff from the SLST 2016 panel earlier this year on grounds of large-scale recruitment corruption, anxiously waited for the high court judgment.

Calling the judgment a "triumph of truth", the teachers expressed gratitude at the court having "removed the taint that was smeared on them for the past two-and-a-half years" and allowing them to continue in service "with their head held high".

The judgment, passed barely months ahead of the upcoming state polls, was clearly a shot in the arm for the TMC-led West Bengal government, which is being accused by its political rivals of large-scale corruption.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the verdict a "humanitarian relief" for thousands of families. "The families of these teachers have been protected. I am happy. It is not right to run to court every time to take away someone's job," she added.

"The verdict has proved that our chief minister has always stood by our teachers and will continue doing so," state education minister Bratya Basu said.

"For the past five years, the education board had been plagued by certain attacks and subjected to motivated campaigns. As the clock is showing signs of turning full circle, we are hopeful the slur will go away, and we will face the next assembly polls with our heads held high," he added.

The lawyer of the petitioners sought a stay on the operation of the division bench's judgment during the hearing, but it was refused. Later, the petitioners expressed their intentions to move the Supreme Court, challenging the division bench's Wednesday order.

The division bench also said the CBI, which was directed to investigate the matter by the high court, had initially identified 264 appointments in which irregularities took place in the form of granting an additional one mark.

The court observed that the probe agency has so far found no evidence that the mark was granted under instructions of external entities.

Besides the identified candidates, the names of another 96 teachers came under the agency's scanner, whose jobs were subsequently reinstated under a Supreme Court order.

The court maintained that the "evidence does not constitute sufficient grounds to cancel the entire selection process".

In 2023, Justice Gangopadhyay terminated the appointments of these 32,000 primary teachers on May 12, 2023, after petitioners had alleged that the primary education board had committed fraud in the selection process and did not follow the rules for recruitment of primary teachers in state government-run and aided primary schools.

In its order, the single bench had pointed towards the possibility of recruitment of a section of teachers without holding their mandatory aptitude test, which the division bench maintained that the probe agency is yet to back up with concrete evidence.

Reacting to the division bench verdict, Gangopadhyay, now a BJP MP, said: "The division bench has the power to adjudicate. They have done what they felt was right. I have nothing to say about it. As a judge, I had passed the order, which I believed to be correct." BJP spokesperson and counsel for some of the petitioners in the case, Tarunjyoti Tewari, said the verdict has raised new doubts among job aspirants who have been alleging corruption in the recruitment process for years.

"What needs to be said about the Calcutta High Court order will be said in the Supreme Court," Tewari wrote on X.

"Today's verdict has created fresh questions in the minds of Bengal's unemployed youth. Corruption has been given institutional legitimacy," he alleged.