Fresh WBSSC recruitment exam starts today: A possible end of fiasco or bigger mess ahead?

Kolkata, Sep 7 (IANS) With the first phase of written examination for fresh recruitment for teaching jobs in state-run schools in West Bengal to be conducted on Sunday to fill up the vacant posts arising out of termination of 25,753 teaching by the Supreme Court earlier this year, the question haunting the corridors of power in the state now is whether this fresh examination would be the end of the continuing fiasco in the matter or would it lead to a bigger mess in the coming days.

The second phase of the written examination will be on September 14.

Now with just a few hours left for the first phase of the written examination to commence on Sunday, the question that is haunting all concerned is whether, even in the case of the fresh recruitment, the process of recruitment would be transparent, or whether the past experiences of recruitment irregularities would resurface at the end of the fresh recruitment process.

Opposition leaders like the BJP’s state general secretary in West Bengal, Jagannath Chattopadhyay, feel the fresh recruitment examination would be carried out under the same corrupt administration of the same ruling political system, under whom irregularities took place in 2016, the entire panel of which was cancelled first by the Calcutta High Court and then by the Supreme Court.

“So when the administrative system is the same, what is the guarantee that even the fresh recruitment process will be transparent and corruption-free?” he added.

What the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) Chairman, Siddhartha Majumdar, officially guaranteed the media on Saturday night is that the process of conducting the written examinations on Sunday and September 14 would be watertight, leaving no scope for the examinees to adopt malpractices.

What the academic circles in the state, like economist P.K. Mukhopadhyay, feel is that, as per the past experiences in the multi-crore cash-for-school-job case, the planning for irregularities was done before the examination, and the implementation of those indiscretions was done after the examination.

“Making the examination system watertight is a small part of the entire process. Who will guarantee the prevention of pre-examination and post-examination irregularities?” he questioned.

The third and most important point of apprehension that is surfacing in a major way currently is whether this fresh written examination process would also hit legal hurdles in the days ahead.

This apprehension is surfacing over the possibilities of “tainted” candidates managing to participate in the test.

The apprehension has surfaced as doubts have been raised from several corners about the authenticity of the list of “tainted” candidates published by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) last week. These sections, including legal experts and central probe officials in the matter, doubt that the WBSSC list has been deliberately truncated, reportedly either to protect more such “tainted” candidates or to ensure that the final proceeds in the multi-crore cash-for-school-job case appear to be a much smaller figure than the actual proceeds.

As of now, only the 1,806 candidates shown in the list of ‘tainted' candidates published by the commission last week will not be able to appear for the written examination for the fresh recruitment process, considering that they have already been identified as ‘tainted' by the commission. But, if by chance, if some or even if one of the candidates appearing for the written examination for the fresh recruitment process turns out to be tainted in the future, then the written examination is bound to confront fresh rounds of litigation.

According to the former judge of the Calcutta High Court and the BJP Lok Sabha member from Tamluk constituency in East Midnapore district of West Bengal, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who had been dealing with the different cases on the multi-crore cash-for-school job matter since the beginning as the then judge of Calcutta High Court, feels that the number of tainted candidates would be no less than 6,000.

According to him, the number of tainted candidates, as revealed by WBSSC last week, could not be as low as 1,806, since there were a total of four categories of tainted candidates getting jobs after paying money.

These four categories are those who got jobs even without appearing for the written examination, those who got jobs after submitting blank answer sheets in the written examination, those whose optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets were tampered with to increase their secured marks, and finally those who were recruited from expired panels.

Hence, he added, if all the tainted candidates under these four categories are combined, the total number of tainted candidates will be nothing less than 6,000.

Senior advocate and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member, Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya, who had long been fighting several legal battles in the matter, also feels that the total of possible tainted candidates as quoted by Gangopadhyay sounded quite accurate.

"As far as my experience is concerned, because of my long association with similar cases, the total number of tainted candidates would be nothing less than 6,000, and if not more. In my opinion, the only aim of the state government and the commission is to shield as many tainted candidates as possible, and to do that, they have been adopting different tricks at different times, with the last list of just 1,806 tainted candidates," said Bhattacharya.

Both the Supreme Court and the Calcutta High Court have taken strong stands against the appearance of the “tainted” candidates, identified as paying cash for jobs.

Recently, a group of “tainted “candidates, whose names appeared in the WBSSC list published last week, approached the Calcutta High Court for permission to appear for the written examination for the fresh recruitment process. However, first a single-judge bench and then a division bench of the Calcutta High Court dismissed their petitions.

--IANS

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