WBSSC publishes list of ‘1,804 tainted’ teachers in compliance with SC order
Kolkata: The West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), on Saturday, released the list of tainted teachers recruited through the 2016 selection process, naming 1,804 individuals.
The commission also announced the cancellation of admit cards for those among them who had applied for the ongoing recruitment drive.
The move comes in compliance with the Supreme Court’s August 28 order, in which a bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Satish Chandra Sharma directed WBSSC to publish within seven days the list of tainted candidates who benefited from the cash-for-jobs scam.
Earlier, on April 3, the apex court had upheld a Calcutta High Court order that annulled the appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff recruited through the 2016 State Level Selection Test (SLST).
The list, uploaded at 8 pm on the Commission’s website, includes the names, roll numbers, and serial numbers of the tainted candidates, though no separate classification has been provided.
According to WBSSC officials, these people will not be allowed to appear in any upcoming recruitment exams.
“Adhering to the SC’s directive, we uploaded the list containing the names of 1,804 candidates who are marked tainted. The names have been arranged alphabetically along with their roll numbers and serial numbers,” a school service commission official is learnt to have said.
Reportedly, the official stated that the tainted candidates had either tampered with OMR sheets or jumped ranks with the help of influential people.
On Friday, SSC chairman Siddhartha Majumdar had reportedly stated: “The commission’s legal team had already submitted an undertaking to the apex court promising to submit the list of ‘tainted’ candidates within a week. The process is in full swing, and this much we can tell you.”
In a related development, to ensure that no tainted candidate appears in the recruitment examinations scheduled for September 7 and 14, WBSSC has cancelled the admit cards issued to those included in the list. In a notice, the Commission said some tainted candidates had applied for the 2nd SLST, 2025, a recruitment drive to fill 35,726 assistant teacher posts.
After cross-checking names, roll numbers, and fathers’ names, the Commission cancelled the candidature of such applicants and withheld their admit cards.
On Saturday, the Commission also published a second list of candidates from the tainted pool who had already been issued admit cards. This list includes 1,140 applicants in the IX–X category and 1,020 in the XI–XII category, with several names appearing in both.
WBSSC confirmed that their admit cards stand cancelled and that all examination venues have been informed.
The Commission further clarified that all admit cards are provisional and do not confer eligibility. Physical verification will be conducted after the examinations, and any ineligible candidate found to have appeared in the examination will be rejected.
