Supreme Court Terms West Bengal Recruitment Scam as “Systemic Fraud”

New Delhi - The Supreme Court on Tuesday termed the alleged recruitment scam in West Bengal as a “systemic fraud”. The court stated that authorities were duty-bound to maintain the digitised records pertaining to the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff.

A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Calcutta High Court’s April 22 decision. The decision invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools of West Bengal.

Chief Justice Chandrachud questioned the lawyers representing the state government, “The public job is so scarce… Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes. This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?”

The bench pointed out that the state government has nothing to show that the data was maintained by its authorities. “Either you have the data or you do not have it… You were duty-bound to maintain the documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You had to maintain supervisory control,” the bench told the state government’s lawyers.

The hearing is set to resume at 2 pm.

Earlier, the state government had challenged the Calcutta High Court order, claiming it cancelled the appointments “arbitrarily”. The Supreme Court’s remarks have brought this high-profile case back into the spotlight, and the nation now awaits further developments.