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The Supreme Court has given the CBI two months to complete its probe into alleged illegalities in the selection and appointment of employees to state-funded schools in West Bengal and asked the Calcutta High Court to constitute a Division Bench to hear the matter which was so far being heard by a single judge bench.
The apex court, in a November 9 order, said termination directions or appointment recommendation withdrawals will not be given effect until this Division Bench is constituted to make decisions on the basis of merit.
The case stems from the controversy over the selection and appointment of three categories of employees — groups C and D non-teaching staff, assistant teachers and teachers of classes 9 and 10 and assistant teachers of classes 11 and 12 — in state-funded schools in West Bengal.
The CBI, which investigated the case following a Calcutta High Court order, had claimed it recovered a pen-drive with OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets from an ex-employee of the agency entrusted with the task of evaluating these sheets. The High Court found a substantial difference between the evaluation records and the performance of candidates reflected in these scanned OMR sheets. It had directed the termination of some of the employees.
The single-judge bench hearing the matter had directed that the OMR sheets of all 5,500 candidates be posted on a website.
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The affected employees challenged this before the top court, questioning the authenticity of the scanned images. Hearing their appeal, the SC said: “It was necessary for the High Court to examine admissibility of the OMR sheet images recovered by the CBI before placing full scale reliance on them in directing termination of services of the concerned employees.”
The bench of of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi clarified it was not suggesting termination at the interim stage was altogether not allowed in cases of gross irregularities detected in appointments. The court added that serious allegations were made of records being manipulated in exchange for money and that it was necessary for these claims to be established with evidence.
The bench also directed that “protection to the appointments which is being accorded today in this order shall continue for a period of six months to enable the Division Bench to finally adjudicate on the subject-disputes. The Division Bench shall examine all the points that may be raised before it”.
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