HC judgement opens Mamata government's Pandora's box

‘Itis shocking that at the level of the Cabinet of the state government, decision is taken to protect employment obtained fraudulently.’

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Even as the Calcutta High Court judgement scrapping 26,000 appointments in government schools in West Bengal on grounds of gross irregularities in the selection process has become a political issue, with both the BJP and the Trinamool Congress in Bengal using it to appeal for votes, the judgement is a “damning indictment of the functioning of the Mamata Banerjee government”, say political observers.

On Monday, the Division Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md. Shabbar Rashidi delivered a 282-page judgement that laid bare the various acts of omission and commission of the West Bengal School Service Commission, under the State Education Department.

“The court declared the entire School Service Commission recruitment panel of 2016 ‘null and void,’ as a result of which all appointments from 9th to 12th and groups C and D, where irregularities were found, stood cancelled,” said Firdous Samim, the High Court advocate who came into the limelight for representing many candidates who complained of being cheated out of their jobs.

Senior counsel and CPM leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya says, “There is no doubt that the scam is of gigantic proportions. It is the biggest of its kind during the TMC rule of 11 years. It is a full-fledged organised scam which goes down to the bottom to the villages from where ineligible candidates who were willing to pay a hefty sum to the Trinamool touts were recruited.”