Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court, on Tuesday, dismissed the petition of ‘tainted and ineligible’ School Service Commission (SSC) candidates, who moved the court a day before seeking to participate in the fresh recruitment process for school teachers in West Bengal.
The High Court also reprimanded such candidates for filling the petition and questioned their intention.
The court did not interfere in the list of ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates, which was published by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Saturday evening.
The court observed that this is not a suitable case to interfere with the published WBSSC list.
At the hearing, the court questioned where the ‘tainted ineligibles’ who filed the petition had been for so long.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya said, “Where were they (tainted and ineligible West Bengal SSC candidates) for so long? The moment the list was published, they came to the court. Enough is enough! How can you say that the ‘tainted ineligibles’ are not ineligible after publishing the list in compliance with the Supreme Court’s order?”
As per the Supreme Court’s order, the WBSSC published the list of ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates.
The list contained 1,806 names along with their roll numbers.
According to the Supreme Court’s order, the ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates will not be able to appear in the SSC recruitment examination scheduled for September 7 and 14.
However, after the commission published the list, more than 350 ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates approached the Calcutta High Court on Monday, raising questions about the list.
The plaintiffs filed a petition to allow them to appear in the examination.
According to the petitioners, who decided that they were ‘tainted’ and on what basis are they being called ‘tainted’.
When the case came up for hearing on Tuesday, the judge reprimanded the petitioners.
He asked whether they (tainted and ineligible’ candidates) had gone to school by December 31, following the Supreme Court’s order.
The judge asked that if they had not gone to school, why had they not come to court earlier?
Justice Bhattacharyya said, “You could not go to school after the Supreme Court’s order on April 17. Why have you applied now?”
Advocate Anindya Lahiri and advocate Shakya Sen were present in the court on behalf of the ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates.
They said that the conditions laid down by the High Court’s division bench for the ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates are not applicable to these candidates.
On the other hand, advocate Kalyan Banerjee, representing the WBSSC, said that all the petitioners are ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates.
“There is no point in arguing about this. There are allegations of OMR sheet tampering against all these candidates. SSC has compared the list recovered by the CBI with that. They got jobs by rigging the OMR sheet. These candidates got jobs by jumping ranks,” Banerjee added.
Justice Bhattacharyya again wanted to know from the plaintiffs what they were doing all this time and questioned why didn’t they go and tell the WBSSC that they were not ineligible candidates.
After not getting a satisfactory response from the petitioners, the high court dismissed their petition.
As a result, the ‘tainted’ candidates will not be able to appear for the examination scheduled on September 7 and 14.
The Supreme Court bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma had directed that ‘tainted and ineligible’ candidates will not be able to appear for the exam.
As per the Supreme Court’s order, WBSSC made the list of names of such ‘tainted and ineligible’ job seekers public.
(IANS)
