Kolkata: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the Calcutta High Court judgement which had refused to interfere with the new recruitment rules of West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in conducting fresh recruitment of school teachers.
The bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Satish Chandra Sharma said the court found “no good ground and reason to interfere with the impugned judgment/order passed by the High Court.”
The petitioners, who were job aspirants, had approached the Supreme Court challenging the High Court’s directive which dismissed the appeal and upheld the new recruitment process initiated under the West Bengal School Service Commission (selection for appointment to the post of assistant teachers for upper primary level Classes IX-X and classes XI-XII) Rules of 2025.
The petitioners had challenged the applicability of the 2025 rules, objecting to changes in eligibility criteria, mainly setting of an upper age limit, besides minimum required academic marks from 45 per cent to 50 per cent and introduction of a 10-mark weightage for prior teaching experience.
The apex court stated that age relaxation cannot be granted to everyone. However, it also acknowledged that there could be exceptions, which it conveyed to the petitioners. However, the court had retained the job of one Soma Ray on humanitarian grounds. Age relaxation may be considered for such candidates but not for all, the court said.
The petitioners had argued that the 2024 recruitment notification should follow the terms of the original 2016 notification. The Supreme Court, however, did not accept these objections, though it maintained that age relaxation could still be considered in exceptional cases.
The High Court division bench comprising Justices Soumen Sen and Smita Das De had ruled that the appellants—who had merely participated in the 2016 SLST but were neither selected nor appointed—had no vested right to be considered under the recruitment rules of 2016, which had since been superseded.