In a landmark verdict, on Monday (April 22) the Calcutta High Court cancelled the entire 2016 recruitment panel for school teachers constituted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in the job recruitment scam. This implicates a dismissal of over 25,000 jobs, and is been seen as a big blow to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government.

The division bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi announced the verdict. The hearing of the case ended on March 20.

The cancelled recruitment panel includes all appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff, hired through a WBSC entrance examination in 2016, to various state-government-sponsored and aided schools in Bengal.

The court announced that the jobs of all those who got jobs by manipulating the OMR sheet (or submitting blank OMR sheet) will be cancelled. The court ordered that the OMR sheet or answer sheet should be uploaded on the WBSSC server immediately.

The court has ordered the school teachers who were recruited illegally, to give back their salaries within four weeks and directed the district magistrates for collecting the money from these teachers.

The bench also directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to carry out further investigation the WBSSC scam and submit a report within three months.

The high court also said that those who got jobs after the WBSSC panel got dissolved will have to return the salary received with 12 percent interest within the next 4 weeks. The concerned officials of the district have to submit the money to the court within the next 2 weeks.

Teacher recruitment corruption case has created noise in the state politics over last three years. The CBI had arrested former Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in 2022 for his alleged links in the scam.