Apex Court to hear pleas in Bengal school job scam case on Sep 24

Kolkata: The Supreme Court on Tuesday is learnt to have said that on September 24 it would hear the pleas of West Bengal government and others challenging a Calcutta High Court order that invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in state government and aided schools.

A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said it may not be able to hear the batch of pleas, listed on Tuesday, due to the hearing of some other matters during the day. “We will list it on September 24,” the CJI said.

Earlier, the top court had said that it will hear the pleas on September 10 and granted last opportunity to the parties to file their responses to the petitions by August 16.

The bench, also comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, asked the nodal counsel to prepare a common compilation of the records in electronic form and ensure that the judgments cited by the parties were part of one set of the PDF documents.

The Apex Court has been hearing 33 petitions on the high court’s April 22 judgment on the matter. On May 7, it granted a major relief to teachers and non-teaching staff of West Bengal whose services were invalidated by the high court on the grounds of

irregularities in the appointment process.

It, however, permitted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue with its probe and said it could also investigate members of the state Cabinet, if needed.

More than 23 lakh candidates appeared for the State Level Selection Test (SLST)-2016 for 24,640 vacant posts. A total of 25,753 appointment letters were issued against the 24,640 vacancies.

The High Court had instructed those appointed outside the officially available 24,640 vacancies, appointed after the expiry of the official recruitment date, and those who submitted blank OMR sheets but obtained

appointments to return all remunerations and benefits received by them with 12 per cent per annum interest

within four weeks.