School job case: WBSSC affidavit will have to give details on irregularities adopted

Kolkata, Dec 19 (IANS) The West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), in its affidavit on its findings in the cash-for-job case enquiry, has to give details of the methods adopted to hire ineligible candidates.

Sources in the state education department said that the nature of the unfair methods adopted will have to be categorised along with the details of ineligible beneficiary in each category.

There will be separate lists of categories for the secondary and higher secondary teachers, sources added.

As per the findings of the commission, the maximum number of ineligible candidates had been hired after tampering of optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets or the manipulation of marks records in the server.

The figure of beneficiaries under this category for both secondary and higher secondary teachers will be around 1,800.

At 1,300, the second-highest number will be of those who secured appointments without furnishing the mandatory recommendation letters.

The third category of around 210 teachers will be of those where names of candidates from expired-panels were included unethically in active-panels.

The fourth category constitutes those candidates who were appointed without their names figuring in the merit list and the estimated number under this head is around 120.

There is a fifth category for those who got jobs through rank-jumps in the merit lit but their number has not been given by the commission as yet.

On Monday, the commission faced the ire of the Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi for submitting to the court an unsatisfactory and incomplete report on the school job recruitment irregularities case.

The Division Bench even observed that in the last report filed in court, the third such report filed by the commission till now, the WBSSC seemed to have made an attempt to hide a lot of things.