School Jobs for Cash Scam: Supreme Court orders no CBI action against West Bengal officials for now

The Supreme Court on Monday restrained the Central Bureau of Investigation from taking any "precipitative action" against the officials of West Bengal government in the case pertaining to alleged illegal recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC)..A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, however, did not stay the Calcutta High Court decision to cancel about 24,000 appointments made in 2016. The Court said it understands that taking away of jobs of about 25,000 persons was a serious thing but the beneficiaries of the fraud have to be identified."Please tell us if the matter can be segregated... we see that 25,0000 jobs taken away is a serious thing. Unless we see that the entire thing is fraught with fraud and who are the beneficiaries of the fraud....," the Court said.The Court also questioned the appointment of those who were not on the panel and called it complete fraud."People who were not in the panel were recruited. this is complete fraud," CJI Chandrachud said.While staying action against the officials of West Bengal government who created the supernumerary posts, the Court said it will consider the matter next week on Monday..The High Court, while holding the recruitment invalid, had ordered the 24,000 candidates to return the salaries they received after being "illegally" recruited.In the Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the top court, the State has alleged that the High Court on the basis of oral submissions and in absence of any affidavit on record had arbitrarily cancelled the appointments.The same was done in "utter disregard" of the fact that it will lead to a huge vacuum in the schools, the SLP said."The Hon’ble High Court failed to appreciate the ramification of cancelling the entire selection process leading to straightaway termination of 23,123 teaching and non- teaching staff from service with immediate effect, without giving sufficient time to the Petitioner State to deal with such an exigency, rendering the education system at a stand-still," the plea stated..During the hearing of the SLP today, Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave submitted that the recruitment process had started in 2016 and the jobs were given to the appointees in 2018.He further said that the first plea was taken by in 2021 which was taken up by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay - the High Court who resigned and later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)."That is the foundation of this case!", Dave said.Senior Advocate Mukul Rohtagi also submitted that the High Court has thrown away all the jobs after relying upon "a certificate by an accused". The material given by him has been relied upon like a gospel, Rohtagi added."How does the High Court terminate this? There has to be an inquiry at least. A single judge terminated this. How does the court become an appointing authority. There are 4 people dependent per job and there are 24,000 jobs here. This matter needs to be heard," he said further.On the direction for CBI probe, Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi argued that the matter involves the Cabinet and ministers could be sent to jail during the election period.Senior Advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul at this stage said,"Any one involved in creating the cabinet note can be taken into custody... the impugned order does not deal with the supernumerary posts".The infamous School Jobs for Cash Scam pertains to various illegal recruitments allegedly made in the primary and secondary schools across the State during the recruitment process of 2016.Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It had been alleged before the High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR Sheets.The High Court Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi had noted that there was no clarity which of the 23 lakh answer sheets were evaluated properly and therefore, ordered re-evaluation of all the sheets of the recruitment entrance exams.It had also ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue with the investigation into the recruitment scam.Several persons including the former education minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress (TMC) party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the scam along with suspended TMC leaders like Santanu Kundu and Kuntal Ghosh.