Calcutta High Court division bench refuses to lift stay on supernumerary post recruitment

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday declined to lift a stay on recruitments for supernumerary posts in the upper-primary sections of West Bengal’s state-run schools.

The decision was made by a division bench comprising Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das, upholding an earlier stay imposed by Justice Biswajit Basu’s single-judge bench.

The state government had appealed to vacate the stay, but after extensive hearings, the division bench ruled that lifting the stay was not appropriate while the recruitment case remained pending before Justice Basu’s bench. The court noted that the matter required further deliberation, with the next hearing scheduled for June 18.

The high court on November 18, 2022, had imposed the interim stay till December 1, 2022, which was extended from time to time and lastly on February 10, 2023, it was extended till the end of April 2023. In this backdrop, the state had filed an application for vacating the interim order.

The case has sparked significant public unrest. Recently, a group of candidates aspiring for upper-primary teaching positions protested outside the chamber of senior advocate and CPI-M Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya. The protesters accused Bhattacharya’s legal interventions of causing cancellations of school jobs in the state. Their demonstrations also allegedly included derogatory remarks against Justice Basu, citing his critical observations in cases related to an alleged school jobs scam.

The protests led to a suo motu contempt-of-court case against the demonstrators and their alleged orchestrators. A special three-judge bench, comprising Justice Arijit Banerjee, Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj, is hearing this matter.