The highest court in the land has drawn a firm line under West Bengal’s notorious 2016 school recruitment scandal, rejecting review pleas that sought to undo its earlier verdict.
A Bench of Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and Satish Chandra Sharma dismissed the State’s petitions, describing them as thinly disguised attempts to reopen a case that had already been argued to exhaustion. “All relevant aspects have been comprehensively examined. A second hearing on merits cannot be entertained,” the judges ruled, declining even to list the matter for an open-court review.
At the heart of the controversy lies the West Bengal School Service Commission’s 2016 recruitment drive, which handed out nearly 24,000 jobs to teachers and non-teaching staff. What followed was a storm of allegations, missing records, and cover-ups so glaring that both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court concluded the entire process was irredeemably tainted.
A key detail that sealed the case was the Commission’s inability to preserve original OMR sheets or even mirror copies—an omission the Court said made verification impossible and suggested an orchestrated cover-up. “The lapses and illegalities crippled the integrity of the process,” the Bench noted.
The April 3 judgment that invalidated all the appointments acknowledged the human cost of striking down even untainted selections. Yet the Court made clear that safeguarding the sanctity of public employment outweighs individual hardship. “Purity of the process is paramount,” the ruling had stressed.
Relief, however, wasn’t absent. The Court had shielded terminated appointees from refunding their past salaries, allowed disabled candidates to stay on until a fresh recruitment, and granted them age relaxation for future attempts. Those who had quit other government posts to accept these tainted jobs were given a path back to their previous positions, with seniority intact though without back wages.
The April verdict also carried sharp words for State authorities, accusing them of engineering and perpetuating the scandal. The present Bench reaffirmed that those adverse remarks were “fully warranted.”
With Tuesday’s dismissal, the curtain has fallen on the State’s last legal maneuver. The mass appointments of 2016 stand scrapped, and no further recruitment can be carried out under the tainted process.
