To be ready for all eventualities, Mamata Banerjee unveils teacher recruitment schedule | Kolkata

KOLKATA: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday announced the schedule for a fresh selection tests for 24,203 school teachers who lost their jobs following the Supreme Court’s April 3 order in the bribe-for-employment case and stressed that every one would have to follow the verdict that requires the fresh recruitment process to start by May 31.

Banerjee also announced that Group C and D school staffers, who have been barred by the Supreme Court from taking the fresh test, would be recruited to other government departments.

“We have already filed our review petition but the Supreme Court is in recess because of the summer holidays. We have no time. The advertisement for the tests will be published on May 30. We will have no answer if the court asks after the summer recess why we did not follow its April 3 and April 17 orders,” Banerjee told a press conference at Nabanna, the state secretariat.

Banerjee also said an additional 11,517 new posts for class 9 and 10 teachers, 9,912 posts for class 11 and 12 teachers, and 1,571 vacancies at the Group C and D level have been created under the same selection process. With these, the tests will be conducted to fill more than 44,000 vacancies.

Banerjee said the state government had filed a petition but had to be prepared in case its request was rejected.

“We have to be ready for all the possibilities. It is not that we want to do this. We are under compulsion. I urge everybody to take the selection test. If our review petition yields good results, then we can ignore the selection process. But if the court’s order is not satisfactory, then we will have to go by the test results,” Banerjee said.

“As directed by the court, age limits will not apply to those who are more than 40 years old. Moreover, you will be granted an advantage for your on-the-job experience,” she said.

The Supreme Court on April 3 cancelled the appointment of 25,752 school teachers and non-teaching staff (Group-C and D) from the 2016 recruitment panel, saying there was no way to segregate the tainted from the non-tainted.

Following an appeal by the West Bengal government, the top court on April 17 allowed non-tainted teachers to continue in service until December 31 but underlined that they must go through a fresh selection test. The court also directed the state to start the process by May 31 and complete it in three months.

Outlining the schedule, Banerjee said the online applications can be filled out from June 16 to July 14.

The panel will be published on November 15 and counselling will commence on December 20.

“If our review petition yields no positive results, then we will complete the written tests, interviews and counselling by November. Everybody should take the test or else you will lose your jobs,” said Banerjee.

Banerjee also responded to criticism that the government wasn’t doing enough. “In Tripura, 10,000 teachers lost their jobs (when the Left Front was in power) but the current government did nothing for them. Around 69,000 teachers faced the same fate in Uttar Pradesh. You have seen the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh. Nobody got justice there.”

The teachers are reluctant to appear for the test all over again.

Brindaban Ghosh, one of the leaders of the teacher groups demanding they be retained, said they had apprehended that the government would try to make them appear for an examination.

“Banerjee announced our death warrant today,” he said, claiming that the chief minister had gone far beyond what the top court had mandated.

“I don’t think the government has any plan to save our jobs. Today, we found Mamata Banerjee trying to divert attention from the corruption in the education department, which is the key issue. She could have allotted more time for the selection process so that the hearing on the review petition could take place,” said Ghosh.

“Only age relaxation is not enough to make up for the mental stress we are going through. Our families are in distress. One has to go through the entire syllabus to prepare for a competitive examination. We are in no state to do that,” he added.

In May 2022, the Calcutta high court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the appointment of non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission and the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education between 2014 and 2021 when TMC’s Partha Chatterjee was education minister. Many appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs after failing the selection tests.