'Tried to shield untainted teachers': SC junks review pleas against order scrapping 25k Bengal school jobs; says selection process was vitiated and tainted beyond redemption
Supreme Court
has dismissed all review petitions against its April 3 order scrapping the 2016 recruitment of 25,734 school staffers, saying the selection process was "vitiated and tainted" beyond redemption.
The Aug 5 order could be accessed on Tuesday.
On Bengal govt's plea, the SC had allowed "untainted candidates" to continue as teachers till Dec 31 and directed the state to complete fresh recruitments to all vacant posts by then. The state has already issued notification and schedules for fresh recruitment in keeping with the SC-mandated timeline.
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The Bengal govt, state School Service Commission, a section of both 'tainted' and 'untainted' teachers, group C and group D staffers had filed review petitions against the apex court order but an SC bench of justices Sanjay Kumar and Satish Chandra Sharma dismissed all of them saying, "These review petitions which, in effect, seek a re-hearing of the entire matter on merits, therefore, do not deserve to be entertained as all relevant aspects have already been examined and considered comprehensively.
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Tried to shield untainted to greatest extent possible: SC
The SC bench said its April 3 order "was passed after hearing extensive and exhaustive arguments and upon considering all aspects, factual and legal". The judges reasoned that SSC's failure to retain original OMR sheets or at least their mirror copies to "cover up lapses and illegalities" made verification more difficult and led to the "inevitable conviction that the entire selection process was compromised".
This is what had led to the selection panel being invalidated, the bench said.
The SC added that it had tried to protect the interests of untainted candidates to the "greatest extent possible". "No doubt, invalidation of such untainted appointments would lead to heartburn and anguish, which the court was fully conscious of, but protecting the purity of the selection process is paramount and necessarily has to be given the highest priority," it said.
It added, "The adverse remarks made against the authorities concerned, who were wholly and solely responsible for this entire imbroglio, adversely affecting the lives of thousands of candidates, untainted and tainted, were fully warranted and justified."
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