Cal HC sets aside single-judge order, restores jobs of 32K primary teachers

Kolkata: A Calcutta High Court division bench on Wednesday set aside a previous single-judge order that had cancelled the appointment of 32000 primary teachers recruited through the 2014 selection process.

Welcoming the court’s decision, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told the media: “We are happy with the court’s order. It is a great relief that the jobs of these teachers are saved...We want to generate jobs and not take them away”. Her party, Trinamool Congress, also upheld the decision, claiming that a conspiracy by political forces to snatch away jobs had been exposed.

The Division Bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra held that the findings and directions of the earlier judgment by former judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay could not be sustained on the basis of the materials placed before the court.

The Bench noted that the single judge had concluded that no aptitude test was held, that interview guidelines did not exist, that aptitude marks were “wholly illegal”, and that interview marks were granted arbitrarily. The Division Bench recorded that these conclusions were not borne out by pleadings or by contemporaneous documents and were based on factual assumptions. The judges held that a court cannot go beyond pleadings to conduct an independent factual inquiry or draw conclusions that were never alleged by the parties. They observed that adverse findings affecting large numbers of third parties require clear pleading, evidence, and adherence to principles of natural justice.

The Bench also examined the reasoning that large-scale corruption and malpractice had occurred. It noted that the materials on record, including reports from investigating agencies, did not identify irregularities on a scale that could justify cancelling all appointments.

The Bench also observed that investigations had flagged only 264 candidates by the CBI and 96 by the Enforcement Directorate, indicating that the identified irregularities were limited and not spread across the entire set of 32,000 appointments.

On the issue of delay, the court observed that the teachers had been in uninterrupted service for several years. It held that disturbing settled appointments after such a long period, without adequate proof of systemic illegality, would not be justified.

The Bench emphasised that the consequences of invalidating the entire recruitment would be severe for thousands of individuals who were not found to be at fault.

The Division Bench therefore quashed the direction for a fresh statewide recruitment exercise and set aside all consequential directions of the single judge. The earlier single-bench order had required the state to conduct a new selection process and had invalidated the appointment of all teachers recruited under the 2014 panel.

After pronouncing the judgment, the Bench rejected a request for stay. With this, the appointments of the teachers stand restored unless altered by a higher forum.