West Bengal SSC has filed a review plea in the Supreme Court against the cancellation of 25,753 school appointments. The top court earlier termed the entire selection process as “vitiated and tainted.”
New Delhi: The West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBCSSC) has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court asking for a reconsideration of the Court’s earlier decision that cancelled the appointments of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools across West Bengal.
The Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, had on April 3, 2025, upheld an earlier decision of the Calcutta High Court (dated April 22, 2024) which had declared the entire recruitment process invalid.
The High Court had cancelled all the appointments made through the 2016 recruitment drive conducted by WBCSSC. The Court said the selection process was full of fraud and irregularities and could not be trusted.
In its detailed 41-page judgment, the Supreme Court wrote,
“This is a case wherein the entire selection process has been vitiated and tainted beyond resolution. Manipulations and frauds on a large scale, coupled with the attempted cover-up, have dented the selection process beyond repair and partial redemption. The credibility and legitimacy of the selection are denuded.”
The Court clearly stated that there was no proper reason to interfere with the Calcutta High Court’s direction to cancel the jobs of those found to have been selected through unfair means.
It also supported the order that the money earned by these people through salaries should be returned.
The Court said:
“We find no valid ground or reason to interfere with the direction of the high court that the services of tainted candidates, where appointed, must be terminated and they should be required to refund any salaries/payments received. Since their appointments were the result of fraud, this amounts to cheating. Therefore, we see no justification to alter this direction.”
However, the Supreme Court gave temporary relief to some of the teachers. On April 17, 2025, it allowed those whose names were found clean in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry to continue working in their jobs till December 31, 2025.
This relief came after the West Bengal state government explained that removing all teachers at once had created serious problems in the schools.
At the same time, the Supreme Court ordered the state government and the School Service Commission to finish a new recruitment process by December 31, 2025.
The WBCSSC has now filed a petition asking the top court to review its judgment. The plea was officially submitted on May 3, 2025, and may be looked into by the Court in the coming days.
Normally, review petitions are not heard in open court. They are considered by the same judges who gave the original judgment, and the review is usually done in their private chambers through circulation, unless the Court thinks a hearing is necessary.
The original case is related to the 2016 teacher recruitment drive by the WBCSSC. At that time, about 23 lakh candidates applied for 24,640 available posts.
But strangely, 25,753 appointment letters were issued — more than the number of available jobs. The CBI found many problems like manipulation of OMR answer sheets and illegal changes in the merit list, also called “rank jumping”.
The Supreme Court described the situation as a “systemic fraud”. That means the fraud was not just by a few individuals, but the entire system of recruitment was corrupted.
Some well-known political figures are also under investigation in connection with this scam. These include former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha.
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The review petition filed by WBCSSC is expected to bring fresh legal developments in this high-profile recruitment scam case, which has not only affected thousands of jobs but also raised serious questions about transparency and fairness in public recruitment in the education sector.
The Supreme Court’s strong words and strict action show that cheating in government job selection will not be tolerated.
As the situation unfolds, it remains to be seen whether the review petition will lead to any change in the Court’s earlier decision.
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