’Systemic fraud...people will lose faith’: CJI Chandrachud on West Bengal teachers recruitment scam

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud-led bench heard an appeal on Tuesday, filed by the West Bengal government challenging Calcutta High Court's April 22 decision to cancel about 24,000 appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff made in 2016 by the West Bengal School Service Commission.

While hearing the case, CJI Chandrachud termed the alleged recruitment scam in West Bengal a "systemic fraud". He said authorities were duty-bound to maintain the digitised records pertaining to the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench said the state government has nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities and asked about its availability.

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"The public job is so scarce.... Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes. This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?" the CJI asked the lawyers representing the state government.

'What was the need to shortlist'

The CJI asked, "What was the need to shortlist during the proceedings? Govt created the posts in 2022?" To this, advocates appearing for the West Bengal government, said, "In January 2019, all appointments had been done. But they challenged later and has to be weeded out after 2.5 years and problems arose out of our own making."

Another advocate said, "Apprehension was we did not want huge vacancies, so waitlisted candidates were taken on superannuated posts with disposal of the writ." It was further argued that the Calcutta High Court bench did not have the jurisdiction to cancel the jobs. "Its orders conflict with Supreme Court's judgments in the matter," another advocate was quoted by Bar and Bench as saying.

"But if selection itself was challenged, why would you hire from waitlisted and create supernumerary posts?" the Supreme Court asked. It further questioned if The OMR sheets and the scanned copies were destroyed. 'Yes," the advocate said.

'Keeping digital copies'

CJI Chandrachud said, "It was your duty as SSC to keep mirror digital copies of the sheets?...We did not expect you to keep OMR copies but digital copies in this age. You were unaware that the service provider put a sub-contract under your supervisory control."

"...this is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?" CJI Chandrachud was quoted as saying.

"Either you have the data or you do not have it.... You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control," the bench told the state government's lawyers.

Earlier, the state government had challenged the Calcutta High Court order, saying it cancelled the appointments "arbitrarily".

(With inputs from agencies)