West Bengal SSC issues fresh list of 'eligible teachers' of 2016 recruitment test

KOLKATA: The West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) on Monday sent a fresh list of around 300 "eligible" teachers to the district inspectors (DIs) across the state, an official said. These names were earlier omitted due to "human error". "We have sent the fresh list of 'not specifically tainted' candidates, numbering over 300, to the respective District Inspector of Education offices and we are determined not a single deserving teacher is victimised," the top SSC official told PTI.

A section of the teachers and non-teaching staff, who lost their jobs in the wake of a Supreme Court verdict, have been on a sit-in in front of the SSC headquarters at Salt Lake near here for the past few days demanding demanding the segregation of tainted and untainted among the 25,753 qualifying candidates of the 2016 recruitment tests.

Those 300-odd names had been omitted earlier due to "human error" in the data compilation process as the entire Commission had been working on a war footing since April 21 to finalise the list of untainted candidates, the official said.

Also read Calcutta HC to hear primary teachers' termination appeals from May 7

The first list, released on April 23, prompted many protesting teachers to return to work, though others continued their sit-in. To a question, the official said the new list included the name of Chinmoy Mondal, a key functionary of the Deserving Teachers Forum. Mondal, whose job as a teacher was axed following the April 3 Supreme Court order, told PTI: "Yes, my name has been sent to the DI office for salary till December 31." He said, while names of around 300-350 teachers have similarly been cleared and sent to theDI office as "specifically not tainted," there are at least 40-50 names of deserving teachers whose names are yet to be included.

List of untained teachers

"The SSC Chairman has promised to look into the anomalies. These are mostly cases of mix-up in names of candidates and schools which was caused due to the earlier apparent clandestine approach undertaken by the school education department and then SSC officials in preparing a thorough verifiable database. Their fault has led to the present situation and we are suffering," he said. Mondal said the forum has volunteered to help the SSC in fixing the around 40 anomalies so that not a single 'untainted' teacher suffers.

Meanwhile, around 300 teaching and non-teaching staff, marked as 'tainted' and among the thousands of invalidated staff of state-aided secondary-higher secondary schools were on a sit-in near the SSC office for the past one week till Monday demanding reinstatement. The Commission has ensured the salaries of around 16,000 'eligible' teachers who have not been implicated in any allegations of irregularities.

The Supreme Court had on April 3 scrapped the entire 2016 recruitment panel due to widespread irregularities, resulting in the termination of services for 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-aided schools. However, in a subsequent order on April 17, the apex court allowed untainted teachers to continue their services until December 31.