Verdict a Great “Humanitarian” Relief for Thousands of Families: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
PTI, KOLKATA/MALDA, DEC 3, 2025: A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday set aside a single bench order that annulled the appointments of 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal, observing that “a group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to damage the entire system”. These teachers were recruited in 2016 through the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, and their appointments were challenged by a group of unsuccessful candidates who alleged recruitment fraud.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee welcomed the Calcutta High Court’s order, calling the verdict a “humanitarian” relief for thousands of families. “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,” she said. The Chief Minister added, “The judges have viewed the matter from a humanitarian angle. The families of these teachers have been protected. I am happy. It is not right to run to court every time to take away someone’s job.”
Responding to Banerjee’s remarks, BJP spokesperson and one of the petitioners in the case, Tarunjyoti Tewari, said he has full respect for the court order, but the verdict has raised new doubts among job aspirants who have been alleging corruption in the recruitment process for years. “What needs to be said about the Calcutta High Court order will be said in the Supreme Court,” Tewari, a lawyer and one of the petitioners in the case, said in a post on X.
The bench, comprising Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetabrata Kumar Mitra, said it is not inclined to uphold the single bench order as irregularities have not been proven in all the recruitments. The court maintained that the termination of employment after nine years would have a huge impact on the primary teachers and their families and ruled that “innocent teachers would also suffer great ignominy and stigma”. The services of appointees cannot be terminated only on the basis of an ongoing criminal proceeding, the bench further observed.
The verdict brought joy and relief to the in-service teachers who, after the Supreme Court judgment which terminated appointments of nearly 26,000 teachers and non-teaching staff from the SLST 2016 panel earlier this year on grounds of large-scale recruitment corruption, waited for the High Court judgment. Calling the judgment a “triumph of truth”, the teachers expressed gratitude at the court having “removed the taint that was smeared on them for the past two-and-a-half years” and allowing them to continue in service “with their heads held high”.
The judgment, passed barely months ahead of the upcoming state polls, was clearly a shot in the arm for the TMC-led West Bengal government, which is fighting perceptions of large-scale corruption. “The verdict has proved that our Chief Minister has always stood by our teachers and will continue doing so,” state education minister Bratya Basu said. “For the past five years, the education board had been plagued by certain attacks and subjected to motivated campaigns. As the clock is showing signs of turning full cycle, we are hopeful the slur will go away, and we will face the next assembly polls with our heads held high,” he added.
A section of aggrieved candidates, who had originally moved court alleging recruitment irregularities, expressed their intentions to move the Supreme Court, challenging the division bench order.
The High Court on Wednesday said the CBI, which was directed to investigate the matter, had initially identified 264 appointments in which irregularities took place in the form of granting an additional mark. The court observed that the probe agency has so far found no evidence that the mark was granted under instructions of external entities. Besides the identified candidates, the names of another 96 teachers came under the agency’s scanner, whose jobs were subsequently reinstated under a Supreme Court order. The court maintained that the above evidence does not constitute sufficient grounds to cancel the entire selection process.
A group of aggrieved candidates had moved the single bench, challenging the recruitment process over alleged irregularities. A single bench of then Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had terminated the appointments of these 32,000 primary teachers on May 12, 2023, after petitioners had alleged that the primary education board had committed fraud in the selection process and did not follow the rules for recruitment of primary teachers in state government-run and aided primary schools. In its order, the single bench had pointed towards the possibility of recruitment of a section of teachers without holding their mandatory aptitude test, which the division bench maintained, the probe agency is yet to back up with concrete evidence.