WBSSC job case: Questions surface over Mamata Banerjee's announcement on fresh recruitment

Kolkata, May 28 (IANS) After West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the notification of fresh recruitment for teaching and non-teaching jobs will be issued on May 30 and the “untainted” teachers, who lost jobs following a Supreme Court order last month, will have to appear for the written examination, questions and loopholes have started surfacing over her announcement.

The fact that the Chief Minister's announcement about the fresh recruitment process and the state government's persuasion on the review petition in the Supreme Court order will go on simultaneously has led to concerns.

The question that is surfacing on this count is whether the state government and West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) have submitted the segregated lists of “untainted” and “tainted” candidates along with their respective review petitions.

The opposition parties and the legal experts have said that since the inability of the state government and the commission to furnish the segregated lists was the main reason for both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court to cancel the entire panel of 25,753 jobs, any review petition without that segregated list is bound to pose questions on how serious is the state government to protect the jobs of the “untainted” teachers.

The Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, has already challenged the Chief Minister to publicly clarify whether the state government and WBSSC have submitted the segregated list along with the review petition.

“The Chief Minister is highly optimistic about the outcome of the review petition. So she should clarify whether she had submitted the segregated list along with the review petitions. Otherwise, it will be evident that the state is just conducting a time-killing exercise by projecting the review petition,” Adhikari said.

The second question that is arising over the Chief Minister’s announcements and clarifications on Tuesday is that while she stressed mainly that part of the Supreme Court order that details the fresh recruitment, she virtually avoided that portion of the order which details the steps to be adopted by the government to ensure the termination of services of the “tainted” ones and also recover the money they received as salaries.

“How could the state government abide by one part of the apex court and ignore the other part? Instead, on Tuesday, the Chief Minister said she would try to protect even the jobs of those who were not included among the ‘untainted’ ones. Does not this hint at another corruption?” questioned senior advocate and the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya.

He also questioned the legal sanctity of the Chief Minister’s claims that the fresh recruitment process and the state government's persuasion on the review petition in the Supreme Court order will go on simultaneously.

“The question is whether any scope for review prevails once the fresh recruitment process starts as per the apex court order. The Chief Minister is just using the review petition as a tool of time-killing exercise and giving false hopes to ‘untainted’ candidates,” Bhattacharya said.

--IANS

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