How Calcutta High Court revealed West Bengal’s teacher recruitment scam | Explained – India Today

The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday arrested West Bengal minister and Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee in connection with the alleged teacher recruitment scam in the state.

The West Bengal minister’s ‘close aide’ Arpita Mukherjee was also arrested later in the day. The probe agency had recovered Rs 20 crore cash from her house on Friday.

The Central Bureau of Investigation, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is looking into the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and government aided schools on recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission. The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.

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Let us take a close look at the court proceedings that took place in connection with the SSC recruitment and how the Calcutta High Court ordered enquiries into the case which exposed the alleged scam.

WHAT KICK STARTED THE MULTI-CRORE SCAM?

In 2016, The School Service Commission (SSC) in West Bengal released a notification for the selection of candidates for several posts in government-sponsored schools in the state.

The exams were conducted in 2017 and by the end of the year, the results had been declared for all categories Group C, Group D and Assistant Teacher.

However, the results were not declared as a merit list, but rather each individual candidate given the access to check their individual score. The Calcutta High Court later observed that this was the first instance of illegality to have taken place in what snowballed into the multi-crore SSC recruitment scam.

Also Read: Bengal teacher recruitment scam for which Partha Chatterjee has been arrested | Explained

PETITIONS FILED

By 2019, several petitions were filed before the Calcutta High Court asking for directions to be issued to the SSC to publish the entire merit list and on March 28, 2019 the candidates breathed a sigh of relief as the Calcutta High Court directed the Commission to make the entire merit list available.

However, the Commission failed to comply with the high court’s order. The petitioners then filed a contempt petition before the Calcutta High Court.

On November 8, 2019, the high court then directed the Commission to file an affidavit stating that their earlier order had been complied with. This was right before the country was hit with Covid which put majority of the ongoing cases in endless limbo with courts only taking up extremely urgent matters for hearing.

In March 2021, after the candidates had followed up with another application, the Commission finally agreed before the high court to make the entire merit list and the wait list available to each candidate two years after the court had first asked for it and four years after the exam was conducted.

In September 2021, candidates who were in the wait-list to become Assistant Teachers for Classes XI and X in government sponsored schools in West Bengal approached the Calcutta High Court stating that candidates who have ranked below them in merit had been provided with “recommendations” by the School Service Commission for the appointment to the posts.

The first judge before whom the matter was listed, Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya, asked the SSC to provide the complete details of the merit list and address the concern raised by the aspirants in its response.

Though Justice Bhattacharyya set the ball rolling with the first order calling for a response from the SSC, by the time the Commission filed a detailed response (in February 2022), the matter had been listed to come up before Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

HEARING STARTS

On February 21, 2022 when the matter came up before Justice Gangopadhyay for the first time, he observed that according to the merit list, the petitioners had raised genuine concerns. He noted in his order,

“While the writ petitioners having the serial number in the wait list 140, 134, 142 and 143 have not been recommended, suddenly, I fail to understand how, the private respondent, Sk. Insan Ali, who is in serial no. 144 in the waitlist and whose marks is below the marks of the writ petitioner nos. 1, 2, and 3, has been recommended and appointed.”

Subsequently, Justice Gangopadhyay asked the Commission to come back with specific answers on when they were told about a vacancy for which ‘Serial no. 144’ was recommended and if the Commission had recommended any other candidate for the vacancy before recommending him. He asked for the Commission to respond by 2:00 pm the very next day.

During the hearing the next day, Justice Gangopadhyay was made aware that two separate candidates had been recommended for one vacancy by the Commission. The Commission attempted to justify it by calling the recommendation of ‘Serial no. 144’ “a mistake”. The judge noted in his February 22 order,

“This Court is not ready to believe that recommendation given to Sk. Insan Ali, the respondent No.6 was an inadvertent mistake. How can a candidate be selectively recommended skipping the higher ranking candidates is not understood. The shelter under the expression ‘mistake’ cannot be used by the Commission in the facts and circumstances of the case.”

He could have stopped there but he didn’t. Justice Gangopadhyay went on to observe in his order, “I hold that the Commission recommended the below ranking candidate being respondent No.6 deliberately for some reasons known to it which may come to light later (The) Commission has deliberately used the law with perversity and has bent the law.”

He declared the appointment of the selected candidate void ab-initio, directed that his salary be stopped immediately and directed Ali to refund the entire salary that he had earned during his tenure within three months. He further allowed Ali to sue the state Government for recovery of this amount for illegally giving him a recommendation and appointing him as a teacher.

In the very same order, Justice Gangopadhyay directed that the Chairman and the Chairman-in-charge of the Commission appear before him six days later “to make certain things clear”.

SSC OFFICIALS APPEAR BEFORE COURT

The two SSC officials complied and appeared before the Court on February 28 this year. The judge had asked the officials about who had issued the recommendation letters that were in question before the court to the candidates who had not fared well in the merit list.

The officials had told the court that they had “no idea” who had issued the recommendation letters and the signatures on the the letters were “mechanically printed”.

They did however name two other people who may have known about the recommendations Dr Shanti Prasad Saha who worked as an advisor to the Commission and Samarjit Acharya, the programme officer of the Commission.

Justice Gangopadhyay passed orders directing both Saha and Acharya to appear before him on March 2. On March 3, it was revealed to the Court that recommendation letters part of the proceedings had been issued by the Commission even prior to counselling of the candidates who had been recommended. Several other instances of such recommendations being issued were also bought to his notice.

What followed was a detailed 22 page order by Justice Gangopadhyay stating that “the unemployed youth in West Bengal are facing a mammoth authority named the West Bengal Central School Service Commission”. By this time, appeals had been filed before a higher bench challenging Justice Gangopadhyay’s orders on grounds of technicality such as delay or legality of the documents submitted before the Court. But Justice Gangopadhyay noted in his March 3 order in clear words, “This court intimated the Government counsel specifically that what is coming to the fore in this matter is nothing but a scam and corruption and no technical point as was raised by him would be accepted by this court because this Writ Court wants to go to the root of the matter to unearth the scam as a court of equity.”

HIGH COURT ORDERS CBI INQUIRY

He also went on to say that what was coming to light “was only the tip of the iceberg”. It was at this moment that Justice Gangopadhyay said “Where the mind is without fear and where technicalities have not gulped the course of justice” and ordered the first CBI inquiry into the scam. The order was challenged before a two-judge bench.

A two-judge bench (which is the appellate bench before which single-judge orders are challenged) stayed the CBI probe ordered by Justice Gangopadhyay. The bench instead set up a court-monitored enquiry panel headed by a retired judge and asked them to probe the allegations. Justice Gangopadhyay noted in an order later that this was “the highest degree of double standard expressed by an appellate court for the reasons best known to it”.

Eventually the three-member enquiry panel concurred with all of the observations made by Justice Gangopadhyay and filed their report. Eventually on May 18, a different two judge bench affirmed all of the concerns raised by Justice Gangopadhyay and upheld the order directing a CBI probe.

SSC GAVE OUT ILLEGAL RECOMMENDATIONS?

On May 18, the Calcutta High Court division bench of Justices Subrata Talukdar and Ananda Kumar Mukherjee in a 115-page order noted that serious irregularities were noted and recorded by Justice Gangopadhyay in multiple petitions that had come up before him. These included the SSC giving out illegal recommendations to select candidates.

“At the root of the illegal recommendations were the activities of the five member so-called Super Committee appointed by the order of the School Education Department dated 1st November, 2019 and approved by then Ministerin-Charge under the advisorship of one S.P. Sinha” the division bench noted.

Majority of the 115-pages are reproduction of several separate orders passed by Justice Gangopadhyay which when put together reveal the magnitude of the scam that was ongoing within the SSC. The bench notes, “It is prima facie apparent from the facts on record that a public scam in recruiting Assistant Teachers for Classes IX and X, Group C and Group D Posts has taken place under the aegis of SSC. The persons involved in the public scam are high ranking officials in the SSC and the School Education Department. The so called super committee setup by the then Minister-in-Charge of the School Education Department and headed by its Advisor played a key role in the public scam.”

The bench justified the CBI inquiry in the case stating that no state agency could be appointed in a scenario involving high ranking officials, including a senior State Minister.

Partha Chatterjee moved the Supreme Court the very next day challenging the order. The matter remains pending.

For now, the West Bengal minister has been sent to the ED custody for two days.

Also Read: All about Bengal minister’s aide Arpita Mukherjee who had Rs 20 crore at home in cash