WBSSC scam: Mamata announces aid for jobless Group C and D staff

Politics Politics of India

Posted by AI on 2025-05-14 20:56:17 | Last Updated by AI on 2025-12-22 13:21:11

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No relief from the Supreme Court for former Group C and D staff of non-government aided schools in West Bengal as the apex court on Monday declined to extend the deadline for the state government to make arrangements for their alternative employment.

The Supreme Court allowed 'untainted' teachers identified by the School Service Commission to work until December 31, but put the onus of employing the former Group C and D staff on the state government, instead of the school authorities.

This means that the alternative postings of the former Group C and D staff, who were sacked en masse after the apex court in 2021 cancelled the examination through which they were recruited in the 1990s, will have to be carried out solely by the state government, and not the schools.

The former staff, however, will not be getting any salaries from the state government till they get posted again.

State Education Minister Bratya Basu told reporters after the apex court's order that the state government would issue a notification within a week to accommodate all the 'genuinely innocent' former employees in posts that have been lying vacant in state-aided schools.

Around 20,000 former Group C and D staff are waiting for alternative employment. They had approached the apex court after the West Bengal government's decision to dismiss them from service in February 2021 after the top court cancelled the examination conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in 1997.

The Supreme Court had termed the examination as tainted and rigged, and said that it was conducted in collaboration with the Congress government in the state for vested interests.

TheWBSSC scam: Mamata announces aid for jobless Group C and D staff

Former Principal Secretary to PM Nripendra Misra first pointed out this scam in 2006

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he had sacked nearly 3,000 teachers who were illegally appointed in schools across the state.

Meanwhile, TMC Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter to PM Modi, urging him to extend relief to the former WBSSC employees.

"I urge you to extend urgent relief to these former employees who have been rendered unemployed and have been struggling to survive and provide for their families," Gandhi wrote in the letter.

This issue was first brought to light by former Principal Secretary to PM Nripendra Misra in 2006 when the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government was in power in the state.

Misra, who was also the chairman of the West Bengal School Service Commission at that time, had alleged that the commission's then secretary, Aurobindo Panda, and additional secretary, Amiya Bag, had manipulated the roster of teachers' posts in 1998 to illegally appoint 1965 teachers.

The scam came to be known as theWBSSC scam.

WBSSC scam: Mamata announces aid for jobless Group C and D staff

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